In covering the learning and development industry, you hear a lot of buzz around millennials demanding a great deal of flexibility—and there’s truth behind it. We expect flexibility in how, when and where we work. We need to be able to access internal information and learning tools wherever we are and collaborate with those further than a few cubicles away. Organizations should harness this wish to have our hearts, minds and bodies engaged in the work we do.

Offering online mentoring and learning opportunities will allow employees of all generations and levels in the organization to collaborate, learn and share ideas more easily. This digitized culture, a perhaps contemporary version of knowledge management, embraced through a fresh mindset about collaboration inspired by social networking, allows employees to dictate what’s most important to them and spur companywide participation. The right tactics can create a vibrant professional community that regularly comments, favorites and downloads content, all while learning.

The definition of virtual collaboration tools, however, can be confusing. In one company, online collaboration can be as simple as e-mail, document sharing or popular social media sites such as Facebook. In another company, it can be a combination of synchronous tools such as Web, audio or video learning and asynchronous tools such as calendars and links. Collaboration tools that do not incorporate information from a company’s analytics dashboard won’t help a company or employees make better, faster decisions, however. What employees need is constant access to data and learning modules, even remotely.

Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), for example, are used as hosts to a virtual world for employees to network. The programs incorporate computer graphics, sound simulation and networks to simulate the experience of real-time interaction between multiple users in a shared, three-dimensional virtual world. Companies use an interface that allows people to create usernames and identities to collaborate with colleagues in this space. When many employees log into the environment at once, there’s an ability to communicate, interact and exchange information. These environments can be used for both learning and sharing information, and the flexibility they provide is exactly what millennials are looking for. In fact, the benefits are twofold; virtual environments are also being used to develop learning leaders in the training they provide to their audience, as witnessed at the University of Central Florida in the example above.

The need and importance for flexibility in delivering information and learning isn’t going unnoticed. The National Education Technology Plan is in the process of creating a technology-driven “Assessment 2.0” for all students. The plan calls to apply the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement. This doesn’t have to be foreign to corporate education.

According to the staffing firm Spherion, five core factors significantly influence whether employees are satisfied with their employers: culture and work environment; compensation; supervisor role; and —the two retention drivers indicating companies’ need to focus on employee development— training and development, and growth and earning potential. Spherion’s study indicates employers are scoring low with workers in these areas. Today’s new, especially younger, breed of workers requires an adapted approach to employee development—one that goes past 9 to 5. 

What learning delivery tactics are you using to provide flexibility for all generations of workers?