Is Workplace Learning Ready for Digital Natives?

A few years ago, I worked at a company that was undergoing a massive technological transformation. During my first week, I had to set up a meeting room using their homegrown application. I was shocked that I couldn’t just use the calendar functionality in Microsoft Outlook to book a room. It was as if I had walked back into 1996. 

The company that I worked for had a mixture of what Marc Prensky in his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” terms digital natives (those who grew up in the digital age) and digital immigrants (those who transitioned to the digital age in their adult years). At the time, the company leaders primarily consisted of digital immigrants, who had arrived at the company in the 80s and 90s and most had never worked anywhere else. As a result, most of the company processes and the technology used originated in the 90s. But, the company had to shift to remain technologically competitive and they had to recruit a younger generation who understood this new digital age. 

The learning strategy at this company primarily consisted of traditional learning experiences, such as instructor-led training with lengthy curriculums or e-Learning courses that were only a rehash of books written in the 90s. Based on Prensky’s article, this learning strategy would not resonate with digital natives. And, the company struggled hard with retaining them. In one instance, a newly recruited Finance MBA graduate left during his first week because when he logged into one of the financial applications, he saw a blinking text on a black screen (remnant of the 90s). The expectations of digital natives are wildly different. I had never considered that the way in which digital natives work and learn was fundamentally different until I read Prensky’s article. 

In an effort to appeal to our younger workforce or digital natives, we started incorporating more visually appealing and video-based training. And, the digital natives loved the new training. The challenge was that this type of training was more resource-intensive and required more development time. I wanted to start using more game-based training and augmented reality and realized that we just didn’t have the budget or staff to develop this type of training. And, the company who still had digital immigrants in senior-level positions weren’t ready to shift the company’s resources. I wonder how many companies will face this dilemma. They know they need to change the way the company does business, but they don’t understand that the way the company trains its people needs to change as well.