Episode 81: How Does a Great Learning Experience Deliver Value to the Business? (Interview with Peter Manniche Riber)

This week’s podcast guest is Peter Manniche Riber, Head of Digital Learning and Analytics at Novo Nordisk, speaking about how the shift to remote work and digital ways of working has, in many ways, democratised learning and made it more inclusive. Great learning experiences should deliver value to the individual by opening up new opportunities as well as creating value for the organisation.  


Throughout the episode Peter and I discuss:

• What a great learning experience looks like and how it delivers value to the business

• How to measure the business impact of learning, using business indicators and data that already exists in the organisation

• How to focus on the ethics of analysing learning data, to deliver value, not only to the business, but to the individual employee as well

• What we mean by data driven learning design and why it is so important

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Degreed, to learn more visit degreed.com.

You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today I am delighted to welcome Peter Manniche Riber, Head of Digital Learning and Analytics at Novo Nordisk, to the Digital HR Leaders Podcast.

Peter, it is great to have you on the show. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to you and your role at Novo Nordisk? 


Peter Manniche Riber: Hi David, thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I have been working at Novo Nordisk for a little bit more than two years now, as the Head of Digital Learning. And then they added analytics, just six months ago. Just to ramp that up a bit, to get more attention to the learning analytics bit.

Before that, I used to work at Siemens in the wind industry, also with digital learning. And prior to that also other digital learning jobs, which won't be relevant for this conversation at all, but that is the history of me.   


David Green: Oh, so you have been in the digital learning space for a while. An area that had been growing prior to the pandemic but has almost exploded in the last 20 months.

What are some of the key things that you are seeing in that field?  Before we delve deeper into learning.


Peter Manniche Riber: There is no doubt that when COVID really hit us, that we needed to change the whole operating model around the learning and training space. Everything had to go virtual, like not overnight, but almost, right.

So fortunately, our infrastructure was ready to handle that transition, which is one part of the equation. Then there are all the people who are used to going into training face-to-face and really enjoyed that, and maybe also felt like they had a better experience and a better product from that and had to go completely virtual. While everyone was tiring from the Zoom calls and Microsoft Teams calls and all that stuff at the same time, everything happened behind the screen. So that requires some other things from our infrastructure and also from the people, who were going to still focus on up-skilling, training, learning stuff. That was a whole new adventure. Adventure is probably not the right word, but it was a different world, wasn't it?

So that hit us, absolutely hit us, and has been quite a journey. We have learned a lot from it, but we are not done with that, yet it is still completely virtual with us. We are slowly, moving back to some of it will be classroom, but going forward, obviously we will take a good hard look at which format we actually need to use. 


And there are other things in that equation related to travel and sustainability around our learning and training as well. So interesting, interesting world.  


David Green: Yeah, very interesting. What are some of the big differences you see in digital learning versus classroom learning? Is there something around the style of learning? Is it the length of the sessions? 
We would love to hear some of the key differences that you see.  


Peter Manniche Riber: Yes, and I think what we need to underline is that it is not new. Digital learning has been around for a couple of decades and maybe even more, if you count other forms of maybe some of the asynchronous things that have been done.

But I think it is a different game because when you are in a classroom, you can feel people, you have got an atmosphere, you have got dialogue, you have got constant presence, which you can't really replicate very well in the virtual space yet. So, there is other things that you need to do, but that doesn't mean that you can't design your learning experience to the format, what you just don't want to do is to copy it one-to-one.

And I think that what we need to make sure is that we design our learning experiences to the things that we can do very well, in the virtual space, and then we leave some of it that we know works very well in the classroom, back in the classroom because both formats are required and can do magical things within these contexts.

It is just really important to be mindful around what works really, really well.  

We are seeing great examples and less great examples of that, and I think that is where we need to mature as learning designers and as an industry, to make sure that we are not just putting people in front of a screen and a talking head for four hours. People are really, really exhausted on the other end of those experiences, so it is important that we mix it up. I have seen so many great, great ways of doing that.


David Green: That sort of lends into the next question really. I guess what we are going to see moving forward, and maybe we will talk about that a bit later, it is going to be more blended, I guess isn't it.

This opens up a lovely question, obviously with your experience in this space, what does a good learning experience look like to you?


Peter Manniche Riber: That is a really good question. 


The not-so-great answer would be it really depends. But I think it does always take departure in people's concerns and needs. So always address what people are concerned about and what they need. I think that point is the part you will never fail. So that learning experience, obviously, and then the other spice to that is your level of creativity. How do you really solve the problems for people, those concerns and needs, how do you address them?

If you listed them down then, people need to feel safe, that would be one concern. They need to feel safe with this topic or whatever. How do you really make people feel safe? Can you do that virtually? Can you do that in a classroom? Do you need to do other things? Do you send things? Do you have mentorships? Do you have conversations?

It is not always your regular modality, let’s make a video, let's do a PDF, let’s do a classroom, maybe it is different. Creative performance, I’ve seen so many great examples of where you send physical things, by mail to people, they open up that box and they go into their learning experience virtually, with those assets that they have received. That is just one creative example of how you can spice things up.

Also linking people together virtually is much easier on a global scale in cultural understanding and getting other perspectives and reflections into training sessions, that we couldn't do before, because we had to fly people in, and we were very reliant on that. 


So, there is a whole new equality that has been created across the globe within also learning and training, but everything I guess, everyone is equal when they are on a virtual session. That makes it much more powerful and much more possible for us to diversify the conversation.

So, a good learning experience for me, always departs in the needs and concerns that need to be solved and then that spice of creativity, where you really use formats and maybe also explore new formats, to address those concerns and needs.

That was a long talk about a learning experience, but it really has to hit those needs. And then first and foremost, if you want to make it memorable, and you do want to make it memorable, then you need to make sure that you hit the spot on things that make stuff memorable, which is rarely just reading text, or listening to someone talk about a topic in a slide deck, so unless they are dressed up as a crocodile or something like that, it will probably not be super memorable. 


So, the memorability is always something I try to champion by saying, guys, you need to make it memorable by doing something out of the ordinary, to make it stick. I think that is how the brain works, isn't it?

So that is another angle to that.  


David Green: I might well get the crocodile suit out of the wardrobe for my next session.  


I suppose one argument about, obviously the pandemic has caused, this shift to doing more digital learning versus classroom, as you said, it kind of democratises learning a little bit. Because number one, as you said, everyone is kind of equal in many respects. 
But two, it enables you to bring that global audience together, which might create a slightly more immersive learning experience, especially for those that can’t get budgets to fly all over the world. I don't know if you do them all in Denmark, obviously you don't, you do them all around the world, but if you have to fly, there is the cost involved in doing that. And then some people have constraints, of course, because maybe their family limits them from traveling somewhere for a week's training course. Whereas doing it digitally is more inclusive, I guess, in some respects as well.  

Peter Manniche Riber: That is the biggest win actually for us in digital learning. All of a sudden, we were hit but we were ready with the infrastructure to democratise this across the globe, which means people from regions of the world, which is mainly outside headquarters, all of a sudden had equal opportunities to access training and learning, which they hadn't had before to the same extent. 


And also, when joining training and learning experiences, there was an equality immediately because you joined that same room, on the same basis, and started having conversations whereas, as you said, otherwise you would have to travel around the world and be really flexible with other arrangements in your life. 
So, there is obviously an advantage to that, which we harvested. I don't think we quite understand yet what that means, but we have definitely seen it through some of the data that we have seen just on consumption of learning, that has really skyrocketed in areas. There has really been a hunger in areas outside headquarters, to start engaging in these activities. Which they didn't have the opportunity to do, prior to COVID.  


David Green: Well, I think we will explore a little bit more on that, throughout the rest of the conversation.

What sort of value does, and you might now start to talk to your inclusion of analytics into your role over the last six months? How does a great learning experience deliver value to the business? 


Peter Manniche Riber: That is a good question. And that is actually exactly the question, David, that we need to ask all the learning designers who are doing programs or learning interventions, planning those things out, or even just distributing videos from LinkedIn Learning or wherever it is. Training has to come with that question. 
Learning must come with that question. How is this going to provide value in the business after people have taken it? The next question will then be from me. And how are you going to measure that? So which indicators in the business are you going to want to see a change in, when distributing this training or learning intervention? 

That is really the question, and it seems simple to ask that question, but it is a difficult one to answer. That requires that the person who is designing the program knows what is available, what can I measure?

And also, there is a huge mountain that people, and that is some of the things that I would love us to demystify a little bit here today is also, how do you really get a hold of that data and how do you crunch that data, to make it meaningful in your context? And actually, see is the needle moving? Are we improving the things in the business, that we set out to?  


David Green: Yes, and I think we can definitely dive into some of that because obviously you have designed plenty of learning. I would love to understand from you, and maybe you have got some specific examples at Novo Nordisk, around how you have understood what the business indicator is that you are trying to effect through training, and then how you design the course to deliver on those and then how you measure afterwards? It would be great to see if you have got some examples around that.  


Peter Manniche Riber: Yeah, well, we definitely do. I can't get completely specific, but we make a couple of examples of, let's say you have got a lean training that you want people to go on. 


Now, obviously we need to go in and ask the subject matter experts, because I am not an expert, which measurables, and luckily within the lean framework, we have got a lot of measurables, like waste, time, all sorts of effectiveness measurables that are actually already being done when rolling out lean. 


So, if you want to train people on, let's say eliminating waste, that would be one module that you would say, this is what we need to get people better at. It's so easy to think, how can we get a baseline on that? What are the numbers, what do they look like today? Are we measuring waste? Hopefully we are. If we are not, then let's get started doing that.

That is the first conversation we will have. And then we will take a look at which target group are we distributing this learning intervention to? And how to then measure and how to get close to what they can affect?

And this is another aspect that we will probably talk about as well. It is really difficult to get causation in the picture. So, we can't say, because people went to this lean waste elimination training, then waste reduced by 50%. We cannot do that. The human being is so much more complex than that, we do irrational things, we do rational things, and there are so many other things that could have affected that variable. 
So, we cannot prove that our training actually made the difference. But what we can say is whether the training contributed to the difference before and after. And that is enough.

We can actually over time, when we get enough data, and put it into enough context, with enough people, we can start predicting what will happen. If we put a training in like this, the probability of our waste elimination or the numbers will actually do this and that.

That is the journey we are starting. To try and put training into a context where we have some what control of the environment and the numbers and then we will see what happens. And we try to repeat that. And the more we try to repeat that in the context, the more certain will be with time, that this learning intervention will actually change things to the better. And that is what we are trying to do and that could be on any topic.

I am just going to try and get really specific because this always gets people thinking like, how can I relate that to my own business? But in any business, you have sales. Sales is an easy win to start out with. You have got sales; it goes up and down and you can actually track that down to individuals. Obviously, you would have to adhere to all the GDPR regulations, which we are as well so we are not exposing any individual data, we are really just looking at trends within groups of people. 
But you can say, pretty straightforward, is this training contributing to sales growth or the opposite, or nothing at all?

And you have got production efficiency, so you have probably got all numbers on how your production facilities, if you are a production company, how that is working.

You have got customer service, probably also measuring satisfaction on that. 
You have even got people wellbeing, which I think is a major underrated factor, when we are doing training and learning, is that contributing to people's wellbeing or not? And we have got a lot of training and learning interventions, which is about people's ability to work efficiently, but also be emotionally present and feel good about working in the company. 


There are so many different measures that you can just go to the business, and you would probably, in most businesses, you would have those numbers available somewhere. So, you need to make friends with an IT quickly, within the data science community if you have got one of those, but just in the sales divisions, production facilities, go talk to people and ask them, where are the numbers, where are you logging this and how can I get access to this?

So many opportunities. When you have then got a list of measurables that you can go to your learning designers and say, guys, when we are doing training within project management, these measures could actually be relevant for you guys to include, or if it is a lean training or something else, that will get learning designers thinking. Because I think that is probably the biggest hill for us in the learning community in general is we need to start thinking about these things when we design learning and training, and it doesn't have to be super complicated.  


David Green: Yes. If you just look at analytics or people analytics in general, it is what are the outcomes we are trying to effect? One of your examples there is around sales performance, okay, so let's bring it to people, what are the people elements that can impact on sales performance?

Learning could be one of those indicators and as you said, it is about understanding if we can see that high-performance in sales, for example, have undertaken these series of learning versus others that aren't as high performing, haven’t, and we have got these other indicators as well, you can start to draw some conclusions perhaps. But not necessarily causation, because as you said, there are so many different things could come together if you can identify the main thing. So, another example could be around tenure in role, another example could be around manager, a business element of sales if you are working in a complex sales environment, how many customer opportunities are you running at the same time?

There are lots of different things that come together and if you can identify some of those in sales, you can actually bring that into the design of the learning course So for example, to be a more effective salesperson it might be, don't try and run 30 deals at once. We have seen that our highest performing salespeople in the area that you are, are running 15 or something like that. I mean, there is probably not a magic number it is probably a number of areas. And how can we help you to do that effectively? 

So, it is thinking like that and, as you said, talking to the people that are in that part of the business, who understand that business. 
Maybe talking to some high-performers and bringing them into the learning design and stuff like that as well.

If you are speaking to some of your peers, you have talked to us about some great ideas here already, but if you had to give them a starting point for connecting L&D to business impact, what would be your number one piece of advice to listeners that are looking to do that? 
So, they may be working in learning design themselves, or maybe they work with colleagues that are doing that.  


Peter Manniche Riber: This depends on your setup because some are fortunate, like me, being part of a global organisation that really prioritises data. Also, in the HR and people function, and the learning function as well, I have got a data person in my team specifically, which is a huge advantage because then you can, and this was the starting point for us, start doing a strategy on how you want to use data, because you are going to need it down the road.

When you start collecting data, it is a great idea to start with a foundation of what you actually can get and then build on that going forward. Instead of tackling something, that probably will take you 18 months to get, in the beginning and then don't get anywhere on all the other things.

So, start addressing what you actually can do. So look at your own learning systems, what data can you deduct from them today? It is probably limited what you are getting in the generic reporting from that system, so go deeper. Ask them for CSV outputs, just like spreadsheets with data on consumption for your people.  

Then get someone, either from your team to up-skill themselves within Alteryx and Power BI and that is going not a huge thing, I've even taken courses like that, and I am hopeless, you guys can learn it as well. Put some data in a couple of flows and get that mirrored out in a dashboard on your own consumption, within the systems that you control. That is going to make you a lot smarter.

When you then go to your people function, you ask them for things like, can I take a look at age, tenure, gender? 
Do we have any personality profiles that we can expose here? Where we are not doing it individually, but in trends or in groups as well? How many fiery red persons do we have? How many blue persons do we have? And try and combine that.

We have got geography. Where are people working out of. We can get more specific if you have got access to salary data as well would also be interesting to start correlating with that. Bonus performance could also be interesting to get from your people and reward function as well.

And again, I have to underline that it is so important to know what you are doing within data quality, data privacy, and that whole space. We need to make people's data safe and understand how we do that, before we go into these things.  

Look at your own learning systems, look at HR systems as well. A couple of home turfs to start out with crunching data on. Then it is a matter of growing your network in the business. As I said, go to the production facilities, go to the sales departments, go to IT, ask them when someone sells a product, where is that logged? 
And how can we get a hold of that data?

It is really that down to earth and you will probably be sent around the organisation a couple of times before you end up with that right person, but you need to grow your network.

At the end of the day, at the end of the rainbow, there will be a data lake where you will put all your data from the learning systems on that lake, connect that to the data from the HR systems and the people functions and then you will get all the business functions to feed into that data lake as well, so we can all start materialising from having that collective data lake. We can start making hypothesis, conclusions, exports, and all sorts of other things from.

So, taking it from 0 to 100, start with your strategy. What data points can you get? What data points do you want? How far do you need to go to get them? What's your expectation? And then start building out from there. Yeah, it sounds pretty simple, obviously there are a lot of hills on that, it's not a straightforward path, but there is nothing stopping you from getting going on that journey. 


David Green: Some really good points there. So, number one, connect what you can do now with maybe some challenges that the businesses has got and start to show their value, I think that is a great tip there. I love what were you saying around networks within your organisation, build relationships with stakeholders. Yes, sometimes that is colleagues in the people department and other areas of the people team you have got there, other times that is going to be business leaders themselves, people actually in sales and in production. And other times it is going to be other data owners within the business as well, and then finance or IT, I think you've talked about all of those. So, it is so, so important.

And then I love what you said around the data ethics piece, the privacy part.

I think with learning in particular, ultimately yes, if we can get some insights from the data that clearly delivers value to the business, but it also delivers value to the employees as well, the individuals. What we really talk about, with the work we do at Insight222, is when it comes to ethics, is there a fair exchange in value for collecting that data on the employee? And if you can show and communicate that there is value in collecting and analysing that data, probably aggregating the results as well, how much is that going to help someone in sales, to our example before, if they can understand what do I need to do to be a high performer in sales and how can the organisation help me to do that? 
From learning, obviously one of the key routes for that, because ultimately that gives us more high-performance in sales delivers a lot of value to the company, but it delivers value to the individual as well, financially as well typically with a sales role. So, yeah, some really good stuff there. 


We have spoken quite a bit, and I think you have really brought to life, about the role that data and analytics plays in L&D already. Can you tell us a little bit more about data-driven learning design? What is data-driven learning design? And why is it so important and increasingly becoming more important? 
 

Peter Manniche Riber: Yeah, well, there are people out there who can speak better to this and have done over time, I am learning. Lori Niles-Hofmann is one of them talking about data-driven learning design. There is a little bit of a discussion saying is it data driven, or data informed? That doesn't really matter for me. The most important thing is that we use data in our learning design.

So, when looking at consumption patterns for target groups in our organisations saying we need a cohort to go on a program, we would love to know what are they already consuming? What skill interests do they have? How proficient are they feeling within these different skills? And where do we actually start, when we do our learning interventions?

That's one point of data we can actually just get from our learning systems, where people put in their skill needs and all their consumption is tracked on the learning systems anyways. So, we know what they are interested in, formats, duration, all sorts of things. We can run that across genders, tenure, age, all sorts of things. So, we might be able to, in our learning design, to diversify and also take into account when we distribute formats, which target group needs what experience. So, we can actually diversify that experience pretty much without data.

We can also look at what people are talking about, now that sounds really a Big Brother-ish, it is not. But we are listening, as it's called, to public conversations on Yammer and we are obviously, again anonymising everything, but looking into patterns of how people are using words. So, if they are using a pattern saying this topic is really hot right now within this population, we would be able to say, okay, and are they talking in a negative sentiment or positive? Are they talking positive about this or negative about this? Is it a problem we are trying to fix? Or is it something we are trying to build on?

That information is also interesting when we do our learning design. We can start out with a cohort saying, we know you guys are interested in this stuff because you are talking a lot about it and we are seeing that you guys are pretty advanced within this as well, so let's start at this level and then we can start testing from there. So that is going to inform our learning design as well.

Obviously, there are a lot of other things that we can take a look at. So where do we distribute training and learning? Are people accessing from a mobile device? Are they accessing from their laptops? Are they accessing remote? On site? How is this actually running?

And the people, do they really decline a lot of meetings? Do they have a lot of meetings in the books already? Are they really busy people? 
What is the duration of our learning interventions? Do we adapt that to the target group as well?

There are so many data points that you can take a look at, and you need to get used to, as a learning designer, to make that design, data driven.

But first and foremost, I believe that it has to derive from the line of business to some extent, so that we are acting on what is going on in the business. So, sales are dropping in this market, or we can see the production efficiency is not as it used to be here, or safety is a problem here, or whatever, and then we will start acting on that and putting training and learning in pockets where it would help. 
Training and learning don’t always fix the problem, but we can definitely say more about what the state of the union is and what it is we are trying to fix in the business.

So, with learning design, we have got a lot of data points that we can start driving our design from. And then we also can listen in on what people are searching for, what people are talking about, the topic basis, public anonymised, and then also indicators from the business on how performance is doing. 


David Green: And it sounds like you are using data as well to help personalise the learning experience for different people, so you can understand where they are today and the gap, and obviously that is going to be different with different people. I guess, preferences on how they learn as well.  


Peter Manniche Riber: Yes, it is really different. 


I think we have debunked the whole learning styles conversation by now. So, people learn in different ways and on different timings with different stages of their lives, days, whatever. So, we can't say that the people react better to podcasts or videos. That is a really a complex thing to actually, trying to stay on the correlation causation thing, we can't really prove that that is always the case. We need to diversify that as well.

However, I think what this is also trying to address is a problem that we have had in L&D, and still are having, is engagement. Just getting people to actually click on those links and start doing learning, is taking them out of their to-do-lists and their jobs, which are pretty busy. People are always busy. So how do we get them to actually prioritise L&D?

Multiple factors are affecting that decision obviously but what we can do, is based on the data that we have, we can actually send you a direct message automated saying, hi, David, we know that you are really interested in Python programming, we also know that you are putting yourself on a scale from 1 to 8 as a 2. So that is your starting point. Now here is the training that took 50 or 100 other people from skill level 2 to 4.

Or even better, here is the trainings that we actually did a correlation and said, people are programming more proficient if they took this training and this training. 
Now we believe that we can start sending out targeted emails like that to you that the relevance, because that is also really, really important that this is relevant for you right now. It also has to be part of your development plan. So, we are also taking into account data on how you think your future looks like, what skills do you want to develop and why? Where are you going with your career? And what is the next step for you? What is the competency or capability you want to develop? Tie that in and say, David, we know that this is what you want to do, because you have told us through all the data that we have got on you. Here is the stuff that has worked for other people or the business historically. We believe the probability is that you will see this increase, if you click this link.

That is going to drive engagement. That is actually going to make you click that link. That is actually going to make you prioritise doing that learning or training intervention. At least that is what we believe. And we can see from our stuff that we have done internally, in pilot studies in Novo Nordisk, that there is a 4.7 times better chance that you actually do it if we personalise the message, as I just said. That is pretty significant.   

David Green: That is very significant, and I guess the whole topic around, and I know something you are clearly passionate about, it is the marketing side of learning. So, that from an individual basis, as you said, we know because of the data that you have kindly shared with us your preferences or where you want to take your career. Actually, this is where we are going in Novo Nordisk as well. These skills are particularly high in demand and because you have got a rating of 3 or 4, on a scale of 8, we think you can get there within a period of two months. And these courses can support you in doing that, maybe there is an element of a mentor as well.

So that drives the individual, but what I would love to hear from you is how you can you market learning to the business? And maybe expand on what you have already said and why it is important to do so?  


Peter Manniche Riber: Yeah. And there are two sides to that.

So, you need your foundational piece in place first and in a company, you need to get your stakeholders on board. And in any other change management model, you need that top buy-in, you need that role modelling from the top and also prioritising this downstream. That is absolutely paramount. You need your offerings in place.  

So that house needs to be in order, that foundation just needs to be in place, before you really can start doing some of that other stuff, because otherwise people would probably take a look at your offering and say, what is that? I don't know and how do I? They don't really trust you yet. So, you need that credibility with your key stakeholders and in senior management, that buy-in just has to be in place.

Once you have got that, you can start marketing your usual, overall branding of what you are doing. But, as in any other market and this I think is problematic outside, and has been historically problematic, to use data to target people with product offerings, they probably didn't know they needed. That is a problem because people did not actively except that people or these companies could use that kind of data, people didn't know.

Inside a company it is different because one of the things that is really different is that we are really trying to do this for the greater good. As you said, we are doing it for the good of the company, we are doing it to help and for the individual, there is no downside to that. People won't be spending money, they didn't need to spend, on something they didn't need.

This is actually us using data to personalise and hyper target messaging, so there is a greater possibility that you advance in your career, that you will get a salary increase, that you will do better things with the product or the company for the company, you will be more sustainable ,you will be thinking of the environment, you will be more IT secure, whatever it is, we will be able to hyper target that to you so there is as a bigger possibility that you actually do the training and learning. It will also benefit the company, because we have done that correlation across saying which training and learning activities actually does the trick. 
But we have to use marketing because people are so busy and historically, we can't just get people to prioritise things unless they are really told to do it, and when people are really told to do something, it doesn't come from a place of motivation always, which historically has led to a learning experience that has been easy to forget, and not so impactful.

So, deriving from a place where we take a look at what people say to us that they need and want, where the business needs to go, with the key strategic capabilities as you mentioned, where do we want the company to go. Pairing those two things up, the individual and the company, and then hyper targeting the messaging saying, this is exactly what you need to do because these things are aligned now, go do it. It fits in your development plan. It is what the company needs. You will benefit from it, your peers will benefit from it, the world will be a better place. It’s just better. So, we need to do that through marketing.  


David Green: Yep, just make it compelling for people. Tell them how it is going to help them. I mean, essentially, isn't it?

Which if you think about it as a customer, if you want someone to buy something or whatever action it is, what product or service you are offering, then you have got to compel them to do that. And obviously the more you personalise that, the more likely people are to do it.

I am sure you have heard the phrase, ‘Netflix for Learning’, many, many times, but the relevant thing here is how do tools like Netflix and Amazon draw you in? Their data is so good that the recommendations that they make, people will take them up on it. I don't know the exact number, but I am pretty sure it is something like 30% of Amazon's revenue comes through its recommendation engine. But to get the recommendations right, you need the right data in the first place, which takes us back to the start of our conversation. 


Peter Manniche Riber: Yeah. That is a really good point by the way because inside a company, and also when you talk about Netflix, Amazon that is on the marketplace, this is internal. So that means that people trust you probably a little bit more because it comes from internally, you are kind of part of the gang. So, you need to be really careful on how you handle that responsibility. 


We can't just go all in and be super creative on all sorts of things, luring people in. We need to be really mindful of how to create that credibility and trust with our brand and make sure that we don't try to shove things down people's throats, but we actually do this really mindfully. So, we need to investigate how often are people prone to get this kind of information, so we don't just overload their inboxes. And in what frequency, so we are not disturbing them too much. Learning isn't everything, you have got a day job, so how are we mindful in how we do this, is probably what is on top of my list right now. Because we could go all in, but it wouldn't be the right way to go about it.

We need to be mindful and careful and get that credibility.   


David Green: Last couple of questions, as I said, I think we could carry on this conversation for a lot longer, but we do try and keep to a normal length on the podcast.

As well as data savviness, and marketing and communications capability, what are the other skills that you would say are vital for the L&D function? And what are the skills that really are becoming important?   


Peter Manniche Riber: And now I am just speaking from the perspective that I see in our company, but also across my network. I think what is becoming less and less important is your ability to create content. I think what is becoming more and more important is that you are able to curate content. 
Which underlines that the content is pretty much already there, most of the time, it may just need a different format.

So definitely one skill I am seeing on the rise is, is curation. How good are you at connecting learning interventions, items, whatever it is, into a pathway or plan or journey, for people? That is a key skill.

One of the other things that I think is a little bit underrated, is your ability to create an experience that is out of the ordinary or unusual, or really, really, really well carried out. I am fortunately seeing so many good examples of internal academies in Novo Nordisk, being done or specialist tracks, or the innovator and stuff like that, where you are really thrown back and say this is a remarkable experience. Someone has really thought this through, used quite a lot of thinking time and reflection and user testing, on putting this together to become an inspirational, memorable, and exciting to be part of.

But that creative element is something that is going to become even more important because there is going to, in my opinion this is just coming out of my perspective again, be less and less time for people to up-skill themselves and if we are doing it in a more virtual setting, going forward, duration of things will also be compressed, that is what I think.

So, when you are doing it, you really need to do it right and you need to make it memorable. 


So apart from the marketing skills, the analytic skills, I would say curation and learning experience design, are two aspects of this that I foresee is going to be really important to L&D in the future.  


David Green: That is great. The last question is the one we are asking everyone on the series, and I am really interested in your take on this. 


I think what we are seeing a lot of what analytics is doing, is it is connecting learning, workforce planning, and skills, together. So, I would love to hear your perspective, how can HR help the business identify the critical skills for the future?  


Peter Manniche Riber: I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know what is going to happen in the future. 
But we can definitely try to deduct patterns from the organisation, in what people are interested in.

So, what are people's skill levels today and what are their wishes for the future? That is absolutely something we can help with.

We can start looking into what critical roles do we have? And what capabilities do these critical roles need to have? And what are their capabilities today that we need to go out and buy, borrow or build internally on the skills that we have going forward. 

We can definitely help the business try and predict from their strategies and the whole strategic piece of the company, what skills do we need for the future and map out what do we have today, and how do they get to that place? 


That is absolutely something we are working to do today and on the learning bit where we are talking build, that is absolutely paramount that that is key in that equation.  


David Green: Yeah. I think that is, that's great Peter, and I completely agree. The opportunity to link skills and workforce planning together with learning, is a huge opportunity for companies. And I think most of us are only probably scratching the surface of that at the moment.

So, Peter, thanks very much for being a guest on The Digital HR Leaders Podcast, I have really enjoyed our conversation. I have actually learnt a lot about learning design and will certainly be applying that in my own work, if that is okay. 


Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you and follow you on social media?  


Peter Manniche Riber: Absolutely. You can always reach out on LinkedIn, that is my primary platform. I do not use Twitter or anything, I can't, I have got three kids so I can only stay one place, that is all I have the time for. 


I do recommend you guys to, because this doesn't just come out of my work, so I do recommend you guys to follow Nick Shackleton-Jones and Lori Niles Hofmann on social channels, because the inspiration that I get from them is paramount to the work that we are doing, so just want to recommend them as well.  
 

David Green: That is great and thanks very much for doing that, Peter, I think ultimately everyone is looking to build a really powerful network, so I think that advice is really helpful.

Peter, thanks very much for being on the show, I enjoyed the conversation.