501 — The Eras Tour: Part 2 (The pandemic years)

And on that episode, we discussed the new normal for L&D.

Uh, how do you think the world of work has evolved since then?

Yeah, it's, it's a really interesting one.

I mean, the pandemic seems a lifetime ago.

Um, and so many of those changes have now been embedded.

So for me, there's, there's kind of three things I think I wanna just throw into the mix.

The first one is I think for, for work, location has lost its monopoly.

And for me as a learning, um, specialist, I think the course has lost its monopoly as well.

So we've, we've seen work become more distributed.

Things like presence seem to be less of a measure of productivity.

It's more about trust and, um, what people are actually providing.

And I think in learning as well, we now move to a, a, a kind of time when deliveries and completions are a weaker measure.

So I think that kind of different way of measuring impact is really important.

I think what we've maybe lost a little bit is some of the flexibility, um, and serendipity of being together, um, now that location is less important.

Um, second one, I think work is incredibly less predict-

Sorry, Andy.

Yeah

Do you want me just to explain just a little bit what you mean by that?

Yeah.

Like, the, the serendipity of being together and losing that.

Yeah, so I mean, I, I think previously, prior pandemic, we were all shoehorned into locations.

That's how we met.

And, and sometimes the most powerful work and learning experiences just occur accidentally-

Yeah

... because we are together.