WINDWALKER XP (The Unveiling of a Revolutionary Learning System)

You don’t have to look very hard to find plenty of articles, blogs, or thought pieces on the state of the workforce these days. And having worked in the training field for over two decades now, I know that trying to provide learning and professional development opportunities to your workforce has been a challenge for a long time. It’s a constant that adult learning professionals have long been trying to solve. COVID-19 has brought a lot of issues with workforce management and training into stark relief, and in this current time of the “great resignation” and a limited new hire market, the challenge of keeping your employees engaged and employed, has never been greater. So recent statistics are showing that creating an organization where learning and professional development are priority are not surprising.

·       67% of Gen X leaders want external coaching; 57% want external development

·       76% of millennials believe professional development opportunities are one of the most important aspects of company cultures

·       80% of employees believe regular and frequent training is more important than formal workplace training

·       85% of employees want to choose their own training times

·       89% of employees want training available anywhere and anytime they need to do their job

·       91% of employees want their training to be personalized and relevant

From: https://www.lorman.com/blog/post/39-statistics-that-prove-the-value-of-employee-training

These statistics may be recent but striving to address these concerns and mitigate these challenges is not new.

Employees aren’t the only ones who want to ensure a well-trained workforce. CEOs and other C-suite executives are starting to see the value of creating organizations that value emotional intelligence, empathy, diversity, equity, inclusivity – in short – a valued and validated workforce. And to achieve that, there is a need from today’s top CEOs for effective and engaging power skills training. Power skills are the in demand soft skills for building a workforce that has the ability work well together to advance organizational, group, and individual goals.

Windwalker will utilize our 25+ years’ experience in instructional design, adult learning theory, and technology usability, aimed at effective soft skills for leaders, managers, and employees to promote and encourage a culture of learning within their organization. We are developing a gamified learning development platform which we describe as a learning journey. We call it Windwalker XP. XP means experience, which is ultimately what we’re creating. In addition to assigned relevant training content, employees will have access to power skills, life skills and technical skills that they need, and be supported by a community of learners with coaching and mentoring.  Windwalker XP will provide training content in the form of online microlearning courses centered around power skills that value emotional intelligence, empathy, diversity, equity, inclusivity and more. peer learning, and direct external and indirect coaching and internal mentoring. To ensure that this content is engaged with and retained in a meaningful way, Windwalker XP is rooted in game theory, or “gamification”, all to promote both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in its users.

Features we are building into XP include:

·       Gamified dashboards

·       Leveling and rewards system

·       Social learning

·       Microlearning content

·       Remote accessibility

·       Employee tracking

We believe that where most existing soft skills training falls flat is that there is a disconnect from making that training relevant to an organization’s culture and making learning an important piece of that company’s culture. Micro-learning delivers the bare minimum of information required to teach or refresh skills needed to complete a specified task. The content provided is not only short and to the point, but also easier for employees to remember and recall for future use. Our vision for Windwalker XP is to not just teach companies power skills, but empower them to practice those skills and pass them on to all employees through their culture, leading to:

·       Employee retention & engagement

·       Career development/pathing

·       Up-skilling & re-skilling

·       Identifying and transferring Institutional Knowledge

·       Critical Thinking/Problem Solving

·       Align performance goals with organizational culture

·       Promoting a learning culture

While utilizing micro-learning as a teaching vehicle is clearly highly effective, applying its use for long-term information reinforcement as well, can unlock its full potential impact. Providing mini-modules and assessments over time that aim to refresh employees on critical topics that can further improve knowledge retention and job efficiency.

While designing each course, the goal of our instructional designers will be to create the program with the idea that the same training (or a derivative) can be provided to leadership’s workforce as a universal training so that employees and leadership both understand these principles and values.

Windwalker XP will allow your workforce to embrace a learning culture by engaging with courses on their own and even learning from one another. Eventually XP will encourage peer learning and facilitate mentor protégé relationships within an organization. At a high level we want organizations to have their employees feel confident in their skills and place within their organization leading to a more productive and positive workplace experience.

We will be launching Phase 1 of XP in March 2022 featuring microlearning courses on DE&I, communication, team building, time management, problem solving, and emotional intelligence.