The impact of social media on L&D: and what we should be doing about it

This article aims to provide a succinct summary of the actions learning and development (L&D) professionals should take to get involved in and make the most of social media, both for themselves and their organizations.

This viewpoint is based on the author’s book published in 2014, which explores how corporate learning has changed in the past five years and what the big trends are currently.

Social media is here to stay and will continually reinvent itself at perhaps even greater speed. L&D professionals in particular must quickly learn to embrace the technology to assist learners to build a personal knowledge framework and thereby assure their usefulness and enduring competence.

By embracing social media you create an enabling and facilitating model, which shifts the burden of responsibility firmly onto the learner.