Can MOOCs Solve Your Training Problem?

In Brief The Problem Though many people now acquire work-related skills through MOOCs (massive open online courses), they often do so without the support or knowledge of their employers. Companies are missing an opportunity to offset the steep decline in formal training and boost worker engagement—with minimal investment. The Solution By encouraging people to enroll in MOOCs, providing study time, and even serving as surrogate instructors, managers can enhance team members’ development. Having employees pilot courses for one another helps ensure relevance and quality. And tracking completion reinforces the value of learning while increasing the odds that people will finish. Companies say they want their people to learn and grow, but in practice they’re skimping on training, often leaving it to individuals to manage their own development. In a recent survey I conducted, more than one-third of 1,481 employed learners—mostly managers and knowledge workers taking online courses—said they had received no training from their organizations in the previous 12 months. Things look even worse if you consider what’s happening in the workforce more broadly. In the United States the proportion of people who received employer-funded training decreased from 21% in 2001 to 15% in 2009 (the most recent data available). And business cycles weren’t to blame: The decline was steeper in boom periods than during recessions. That means a lot of people who want to become better at their jobs are fending for themselves. Organizations could change that—and offset the drop in formal training—by encouraging and supporting enrollment in MOOCs (massive open online courses), which are readily available and relatively inexpensive on platforms such as Coursera and EdX. Since they came on the learning scene, in 2008, MOOCs have gradually shifted toward offering content that is relevant to the world of work. Course topics range from machine learning and Java programming to communication and leadership. Given that employees are already using MOOCs to acquire professional skills and improve their career prospects on their own, companies have an untapped opportunity to harness this kind of learning in the service of organizational goals. Some companies realize this and have started to team up with MOOC providers to enhance employee training. AT&T, GE, L’Oréal, and Marks & Spencer are prominent examples. Others, such as McKinsey, Microsoft, and Tenaris (a tube supplier for the energy industry), are even producing their own content—on management, computer science, engineering, finance, and so on—for public consumption. Unfortunately, however, few organizations are making the most of MOOCs to develop people. About 67% of the employed learners I surveyed said that they would apply their new knowledge and skills in their current jobs or companies (and 27% said they planned to use them exclusively there), but only 5% received financial help from their employers, 8% percent got time off to study, and 4% had the coursework included in their performance evaluations. So most people were basically left to their own devices. Take, for example, Sara, an Italian Millennial working at a company in China. She’s a senior product manager, making progress toward a six-month marketing specialization on Coursera. She thinks that the knowledge she’ll gain will greatly benefit her in her job, since she manages brands and makes decisions about how to position new product lines. Although she has worked in marketing for more than two years, her educational background is in chemistry, so she is using her courses to fill some important knowledge gaps, such as how to calculate demand for a product and design a distribution channel. But she hasn’t told her manager she’s taking the courses, despite their relevance to her job and the costs she’s absorbing on her own. She says that he would not support her development, especially because she’s not planning to stay with the company long term. If her company knew what she was up to, it could steer her learning and reap more of the benefits—with minimal investment. Compared with face-to-face training, MOOCs offer many advantages: The fees are lower, there are no travel costs, and the courses are less disruptive to day-to-day work. They provide content produced by elite universities that’s often unavailable from local providers. Most MOOCs may be started at any time, and many are broken down into short modules, so they’re valuable for just-in-time skill acquisition. MOOCs also enable employers to provide development support in areas that are highly specialized or peripheral to individuals’ core jobs without having to worry about economies of scale. Although academics who study learning haven’t reached a consensus about course quality (it’s difficult to measure), learners typically feel that MOOCs are meeting their developmental needs. In light of all this potential, why have organizations been so slow to embrace MOOCs? Here I’ll draw on data from more than 28,000 learners in 127 countries as well as survey and interview results to answer that question and to offer insights into how companies can better capitalize on this form of learning. Why Firms Aren’t Reaping the Benefits One of the main reasons so many companies fail to capitalize on MOOCs’ training potential is a lack of awareness: They simply don’t know that their people are taking the courses on their own. It’s not that most employed learners are planning to jump ship and hiding the evidence—just one-fifth of those surveyed said they enrolled in MOOCs solely in the hope of finding a new job or starting a business. Rather, many people look at these courses as part of their self-directed career development, whether they have a clearly defined plan or are working toward broader objectives, such as maintaining their overall employability and keeping their skill set up-to-date. As one marketing manager at a consumer goods company in Russia put it, “I consider it my private thing, because I am investing not only in my day-to-day work but also in my future.” Some people are afraid that they’ll appear uninvested in their current roles if they show any interest in exploring a different path. Others worry that their bosses may think their courses are frivolous. As a result, companies aren’t fully informed about their employees’ capabilities and career goals. Managers don’t know what skills their people are building—or what their ambitions for personal growth are. Companies also don’t seem to recognize MOOCs as a viable substitute for formal training. Employers that already invest in talent development by bringing in outside trainers, for example, or creating their own programs are the ones most likely to provide support for online courses. About 20% of employed learners in my survey who had received formal training at work in the past year also received financial assistance or time off for MOOCs. Compare that with just 8% of those whose companies provided no training. And you might think that large, resource-rich companies would offer more help than others, but that is not the case. The people at firms with fewer than 50 employees were twice as likely as those in companies with more than 10,000 to receive time off for MOOCs. In interviews, when learners who received no support for their MOOC coursework were asked why, the most common answer was that their employer does not invest in learning and development at all. They often said that their companies prefer to hire skills from the outside market and that management considers performance improvement to be the employee’s responsibility, not the organization’s. Many learners also felt that their companies were reluctant to fund employees’ development, fearing that they’d then lose those skills to competitors. In companies that do use MOOCs for talent development, offerings are often ad hoc, limited to a few individuals, a team, or a small group. And most employees are unaware of fellow learners in the organization, which inhibits the sharing of knowledge and resources. Why are these efforts so isolated and sporadic? Largely because people hear about MOOCs through noncorporate channels, such as recommendations from friends or ads they encounter online. “The MOOC in our organization was absolutely an accident,” said an IT manager working in an Indian office of a Japanese multinational. “About three years ago, my boss heard about [a MOOC provider on the radio] while driving, and he signed up for a data science course to see how it would go. He was pretty impressed.” Just 5% of employed learners receive support from their companies for MOOCs. By failing to leverage MOOCs, companies are missing out on an effective way to increase employee commitment, especially for young high potentials. In an earlier study, I found that young, highly skilled managers considered training very important for their career development: Out of 14 practices, they ranked it third, behind high-stakes assignments and support from senior leadership and ahead of mentoring, coaching, and job rotation across functions or regions. Yet they also said training represented one of the biggest gaps between what they valued and what they actually received from their employers. That can have a negative impact on citizenship behaviors, such as helping colleagues, and can increase counterproductive behaviors, such as taking undeserved breaks and failing to perform essential tasks. My research also shows that employees who enjoy organizational support for MOOCs are much less likely to want to use what they’ve learned to look for jobs at other companies. That may be partly because their employers tend to provide other career development support as well, making people want to stick around. Still, the correlation is worth noting. Self-sponsored learners are more than twice as likely as those who receive organizational support to see the acquired knowledge as a stepping-stone to a new employer. They are also much more likely to want to connect with other learners for networking purposes. Using MOOCs to Develop Talent Once organizations recognize the opportunity, how can they begin to leverage MOOCs for workforce development? My research suggests several guiding principles and best practices. Senior leaders must support learning and development efforts more broadly. All organizational training initiatives—whether online or traditional—need backing from top management in order to thrive. By believing in and investing in talent development, executives create a culture of learning, enabling managers throughout the company to secure the resources necessary to develop their teams. This may seem obvious, but it isn’t common practice. Learning and development should be a strategic priority, even when leaders face hard choices about cutting costs. Because MOOCs provide a lot of value for very little money, and because they’re less disruptive to busy schedules than traditional courses are, they make it easier for senior leaders, especially those in tough or unpredictable environments, to maintain their commitment to learning. Managers and peers are the best champions of MOOCs. Once a culture of learning has been established at the top, managers at all levels should ensure that it takes root throughout the organization. According to my research, it is line managers who typically initiate and help implement MOOC-based training. HR and corporate learning departments usually have little to do with it (though they may ask people to share information about useful courses they’ve discovered). That approach makes sense. Line managers have the domain expertise to guide course selection for the development of job-relevant skills. They are also well positioned to support individuals’ self-directed learning within work hours: They can balance workloads so that people will have time to study. When employers provide support for MOOCs, completion rates rise from 15% to 58%. In the past, employees received most of their training in corporate programs or in outside workshops and seminars sponsored by the company. But today many learning opportunities come directly from MOOC providers; it’s easy for individuals to search for, enroll in, and try out courses on their own. If employed learners believed that these efforts would be appreciated and supported by their managers, they’d be more forthcoming about the courses they’re taking and those that might benefit their colleagues. One of the learners I interviewed, a U.S.-based integrated marketing manager in higher education, said, “I brought my boss a course description [and pointed out] that this would help our office justify the kind of work that we are doing to the rest of the organization.” Targeted recommendations like this from employees who understand the company’s goals and dynamics is a much better way to gauge usefulness than are online reviews from users in different environments. Piloting improves relevance. While learners generally appreciate having some flexibility in choosing their MOOCs, they admit that too much may lead them to take courses that lack relevance to their work or fall short of quality expectations. As a result, they may feel that they’ve wasted time and money. Learning and development departments can help people do some basic vetting: Does the MOOC have a clear course description and a set of learning objectives? Was it created by a reputable university or company? Is it hosted on one of the major MOOC platforms? Often, however, it’s not easy to tell how applicable a course will be to an organization or a role until someone actually completes it. That’s why it can be useful to have a team member try it out and report back before others sign up. In my research, I found that when courses were piloted by coworkers—or when team members simply rated and commented on courses they’d completed and shared evaluations with one another—course choices were more on-target overall, and people were more likely to acquire the skills they were seeking. Companies can use MOOCs to develop broader competencies—not just skills for core jobs. While all the MOOCs covered in my research focused on marketing, only 40% of the employed learners I surveyed had marketing roles, and just 15% worked in sales. The rest worked in functions such as operations and supply chain, R&D, and finance. Managers can help employees put the concepts they learn from MOOCs into context. The learners from nonmarketing functions said they took the MOOCs because doing their jobs required knowledge across disciplines. For instance, a data analyst wanted to understand brand and product management concepts because one of his clients planned to launch new products in Asia. A programmer who provided technology support for an insurance company’s marketing team needed to get up to speed on pricing fundamentals. Organizations have little to lose and much to gain by broadening their employees’ competencies this way. It leads to higher-quality interactions across departments, and it helps people with different functional backgrounds communicate more effectively. Managers can serve as surrogate instructors. In traditional training programs, instructors help people navigate the material and explain concepts in greater depth when questions arise. MOOCs, in contrast, require self-directed learning. It’s up to each learner to decide how much time to spend on a module or topic, for instance, or whether to study all the topics in a course or just a few. MOOCs offer limited opportunities to interact with instructors or other learners, and most of that interaction happens asynchronously—that is, a question may be answered several hours or days after it was asked. Managers can remedy these problems by providing informal guidance before and during the courses, making learning easier and improving completion rates. One Asia-Pacific area head at a U.S. multinational is especially good at doing this. Before his subordinates took a four-week MOOC on channel management, he told them, “Pay more attention to weeks one and two, which are more relevant to us….I am not forcing you to read about retailing, because we are not in this business line.” That focused their attention and allowed them to use their study time more efficiently. Because MOOCs are not tailored to specific organizations, managers have a role to play in helping people reflect on what they’ve learned and putting the concepts into context. For instance, the Asia-Pacific manager led a session after his group completed the first two weeks of the channel management MOOC: “I pulled the entire team into the meeting room and asked, ‘What have you learned from these modules? How will you relate them to your job?’” He essentially created a makeshift classroom. “Some senior staff could relate the theory from the course to their work well,” he said, “so I wanted to give them an opportunity to foster peer learning.” With that support, his team members could enjoy the flexibility of MOOCs—completing the modules at their own pace—while benefiting from live interaction. And because they knew they’d be discussing the material with their team, they had an extra incentive to absorb it. Employers should track MOOCs in performance reviews. A comprehensive study of more than 200 MOOCs shows that about 15% of the people who enroll actually earn a certificate of completion. That’s low. However, the percentage goes way up when companies consider MOOC coursework in performance evaluations. Only 4% of employed learners in my survey had MOOCs included in their annual reviews, but half of those respondents finished their courses. The only learners with a higher completion rate were those who received financial support from their employers—58% of them made it the whole way through. Factors such as the learner’s educational level, the relevance of the material to his or her job, and course design features were much less significant. One pitfall of tracking course completion—the easiest and most common way to capture learning in evaluations—is that it may shift learners’ focus from absorbing knowledge to passing exams. One organization I studied prevents this by asking people to pick the most important takeaway from each course and devise a plan for how they are going to implement that in their job. The purpose of the exercise is not to create a formal performance goal; rather, it is to deepen understanding and help people apply course concepts to their work. CONCLUSION If Sara is a typical Millennial employee, she will have to acquire new skills throughout her career—research suggests that she will switch jobs more than 10 times in her working life. Even if she stays in marketing, the content of her job will dramatically change over time, as jobs increasingly blend different sets of skills, and technological competencies are often in the mix. Modular MOOCs are well suited to helping employees like Sara develop—more so than universities, which may be too slow to adapt traditional offerings to the constantly evolving requirements of the marketplace and may require many years of study. It’s clear that MOOCs are playing an important role in individuals’ development. The question is whether more employers will support them. Doing so would benefit employees and organizations alike. But most employed learners are now making the journey on their own.

Can MOOCs Solve Your Training Problem?

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