The Evolution and Diffusion of Advisor Learning Platforms

Today, firms are exploring ways to determine the costs associated with training financial professionals — in terms of both dollars and the time that productive professionals are away from their desks. In fact, some firms question whether ongoing formal training still has value, especially when technology can tell advisors almost anything they need to know.

If a smartphone can calculate retirement income projections, what’s the point of memorizing rules and formulas?

The truth is, the dilemma with advisor training ROI is nothing new. Advances in science and technology have always driven changes in professional education—going all the way back to the “cognitive revolution” of the 1950s. These innovations rarely lead to professionals putting less emphasis on learning; they simply change the way professionals learn. For example, professional learning programs once attempted to turn people into walking encyclopedias, packing their brains with every fact, figure and formula relevant to their specialty. Today, all that information resides in non-human appliances. What matters for advisors now—as well as for doctors, attorneys, and other learned professionals—isn’t so much what they know, but where that information is stored, and how to access it.

Right now, technology is changing the way advisors learn in two significant ways: it’s making platforms more accountable and more social.

Accountability: A New Emphasis on Advisor Performance

Since firms can precisely calculate the cost of taking advisors out of the office, they expect the classroom time to justify itself by delivering equally quantifiable results. That’s why traditional advisor education is giving way to performance support—actionable information advisors need to enhance their jobs right now. Performance support provides material in smaller, easily digestible “morsels” rather than in thick, dense lessons. It also makes relevant information available on-demand, creating a “pull” model of learning, rather than the traditional “push” model of scheduling classes whenever training resources are available. On-demand performance support is helping advisors fully leverage their learning capacity.

The Social Side of Learning

Globalization is driving demand for distance learning solutions. With so much advisor talent scattered across the world, firms want to create a collective learning experience that nurtures a spirit of community. Technological innovation has made it easy to implement distance peer-to-peer learning. Even something as simple as installing a video-sharing widget on a learning platform enables advisors to interact with each other, as well as to learn from industry experts, performance consultants, and other key professionals. What’s more: video and simulations let advisors practice new skills before trying them out on the firm’s best clients. These environments offer safe spaces for advisors to “fail” without severe consequences while receiving immediate individual and group feedback from their peers. These styles of learning are impractical without technology, but almost trivially easy with it.

How to Choose the Right Learning Platform for Your Business

Technology platforms are quickly changing the way advisors learn. If you are a firm manager looking for learning tools for your advisors, or an advisor looking for a platform for yourself, you can ensure a better fit by using a data-driven approach. Start by benchmarking how much time advisors spend on learning today, and how well they incorporate their training into their own practices. Then seek out tools, courses, and certifications that best target the specific gaps in making your firm more profitable. Firms often use a five-level evaluation pyramid to assess the efficacy of a learning platform in honing their advisors’ skills, ranging from simple advisor satisfaction surveys to fact-based knowledge quizzes all the way up to results and ROI. Level three – behavior – is the hardest to evaluate and yet it is the Linchpin to getting the results and ROI. Tools like peer to peer video sharing on learning platforms help professionals and managers measure and track behavior change.

Whatever evaluation methodology you follow, remember that the goal of any platform should not merely be learning, but learning together. Look for technology that goes beyond sharing knowledge to enable true peer collaboration, and it will more than repay your investment.

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