The importance of continuous learning in the alternative workforce

The growth of the alternative workforce is largely responsible for shaping the evolution of the talent landscape. Many organizations are grappling with the rise of alternative workers and challenging their own orthodoxies around offering developmental opportunities to their off-balance-sheet talent.

While these opportunities are often limited to training events, providing the workforce with access to a broader range of learning experiences can better engage both alternative talent and their on-balance-sheet counterparts, improving overall organizational performance and driving competitive advantage in the market.

The growth of the alternative workforce (people outside of traditional full-time employment) has affected the global talent marketplace. In the United States alone, the number of self-employed workers is projected to hit 42 million people this year,¹ and in Britain, the gig economy more than doubled from 2016 to 2019 to 4.7 million people.² Moreover, Deloitte’s latest millennial study found that 64% of full-time workers want to do “side hustles” to make extra money.³ As the size of the alternative workforce grows, companies are exploring better ways to engage their alternative workers. One area of focus that organizations are considering is expanding learning and development (L&D) opportunities to their entire workforce.

Training versus learning

While the distinction may seem semantic, there is good reason to separate training from learning, especially when considering an organizational approach to developing alternative talent. Training is generally delivered through formal channels (e.g., e-learning courses) and is often tied to compliance.

Even though it is certainly necessary, training tends to happen outside of the flow of work. In other words, a worker stops what they are doing, attends, or engages in a separate event, and then returns to work. Learning, however, when well-planned, can happen throughout the standard workday. Learning can be built into the workflow experience (e.g., a quick coaching session or a microvideo to help a worker accomplish a task) and doesn’t necessarily rely on formal delivery modalities.⁴

Learning in the flow

Deloitte’s point of view is that the balance should be tipped in favor of more learning delivered in the context of a worker’s daily activities. Learning can be broadly categorized into the “Four E’s,”⁵ a model that promotes continuous, in-the-flow learning by facilitating a holistic approach to development across four learning paradigms:

Education: Formal training that has traditionally fallen under the umbrella of learning and development (e.g., classroom training, e-learning, and simulations).

Experience: Learning that generally occurs in the workplace as workers complete their jobs (e.g., stretch assignments, job rotations, and special projects).

Exposure: Learning that involves interaction and relationship-building in the course of work that help workers develop by building connections (e.g., professional conferences and organizations, volunteer assignments in their communities, communities of practice, coaching and mentoring activities; and blended learning effort through MOOCs (massive online open courses)).

Environment: Learning on tools and systems that workers use on the job to support them in successfully executing their work (e.g., information systems, search engines, job aids, performance support tools, and online asset libraries).

Continuous learning approaches align with evolving learner preferences and help businesses develop their workforces more rapidly. Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends report revealed that almost half of the study’s global, cross-industry participants do not provide members of the alternative workforce access to knowledge-sharing tools and platforms and that only 16% see integrating knowledge management across off- and on-balance-sheet workers as a key factor to consider when developing knowledge management strategies.⁶ In fact, the 2020 report revealed a critical concern that organizations may be failing to recognize the importance of alternative workers as critical to a holistic and strategic approach to optimizing talent. So, what should organizations do to successfully adopt broader-reaching practices when it comes to offering learning opportunities for alternative workers?

Figure 1: Learning approaches and continuous learning: