The Future of Learning: Creating a Long-Term L&D Strategy

Ahead of her CLO Exchange panel, Jani Byrne Saliga, Ph.D., Chief Learning Officer at the IBM Center for Cloud Training, gave valuable insight into topics such as the benefits of building a learning community and digitizing learning.  

What is your background and expertise? 

I’ve had a really varied career. Developing my core strengths began with a Ph.D. in cognitive & experimental psychology, which I parlayed into many roles across IBM. I led teams in UX/UI, Marketing, IBM research, Corporate Venturing and the Office of the CTO. 

At one point, I identified a gap in our existing education programs…and you know how that goes — it was now mine to fix! With excellent talent, a great culture and a diverse set of skills and experiences, we created the IBM Center for Cloud Training (ICCT). 

What is something exciting that you’re working on right now, and something challenging? 

This team is extremely agile and innovative, which is probably why we’ve won four different industry awards for a program that only launched a little over two years ago. These innovations are now being adopted across the company, and in some cases, industry-wide. 

Our latest innovation addresses a challenge associated with digital learning. With all the advantages of virtual, on-demand, self-paced learning, we’ve found that the lack of community creates roadblocks in learning. To address this gap, we created a series of Accelerator Programs, including Study Jams, Study Apps, Flash Cards and Study Guides. Recently, we created a virtual community-based Study Jam, and have seen incredible increases in attendance, course completion and pass rates.

A second challenge has our attention right now. If your education is free (as ours is) how do you build an investment business case that is palatable to finance and the business leaders? We continue to look at how best to tie our certifications to time, revenue or other ROI metrics. 

I’m very interested to see how others handle this. 

Is internal mobility one of the goals of the program you’ve developed?

There is a renewed focus on workforce upskilling and reskilling in many companies in the tech industry. Programs like ours, which are fundamentally based on Certifications (not course completions), are a good data-based means to ensure the materials are indeed learned and can be applied.  

Historically, IBM has used resource reduction activities to address ebbs and flows in needed skills. Now, we have a renewed focus on retaining talent, and reskilling them, if possible. This helps boost morale and has the added benefit of reducing the costs associated with talent acquisition.

What are the biggest issues in the L&D space right now? 

Pre-pandemic, people went to training, which allowed learners to form relationships with new colleagues who were similarly interested in the training topic(s).  

We launched ICCT during Covid, with a completely digital curriculum to address the need to contain the spread of the virus. While other companies scrambled to bring curriculum content online, we were already there, and online attendance was very good. 

Over time, however, we noticed pass rates were lagging in certain areas. We brought the SMEs back in and refreshed both the certification exam and the curriculum content, but still were not satisfied.  

Soon we realized that the individual learner had more difficulty passing than a learner who was encouraged to join and interact with others. We were missing the sense of community in our training.

As a result of this realization, we created something new — an Accelerator Program where learners interacted with each other and SMEs virtually, creating accountability and community. Learners interacted with each other via Slack, asking and answering each other’s questions, and came together once every two weeks in a virtual classroom. The learners kept pace with each other — and very few dropped out. 

The results of this pilot were staggering: a 300+% improvement in enrollment, a 36% improvement in pass rates and a 160% improvement in certifications obtained.  

We haven’t yet determined how yet to operationalize this pilot, nor scale it, but I do believe we are on to something.

What do you hope people take away from your session at CLO May?

I hope attendees gain insights from the panel, and we help them to think about things in different ways. Learning is such a wonderful profession because we are literally helping people grow in their understanding of the world. But I also hope this ignites a fire in the bellies of those of us who lead training groups to reimagine the future of learning. To never rest on our past achievements but lean into the art of the possible.

What are your favorite books, either personal or professional? 

I don’t have a book that I could single out. As a voracious reader, my appetite for learning takes me down wonderful pathways! I have read books on many subjects: history, autobiographies, dystopian societies, cookbooks (yep, actually read them cover to cover), gardening, film, who-dun-it and more. For me, a Kindle subscription is a real money-saver!

However, I have read Pride and Prejudice six or so times, so maybe that one could be called a favorite. I’m a psychologist by training and have always been fascinated by how people learn and problem-solve, and reading is a surefire way to see how other cultures (via the author) do just that.