The New Meaning of Learning on the Job
In Conversation with Megan O’Connor: The EdTech OG
Let’s start with some quick life updates.
I am writing this from New York, where I’ve spent most of the fall building LOTI. Last Wednesday’s launch was the culmination of several months of hard work—I wouldn’t have made the effort if I didn’t truly believe it would help people. All of your support means a lot.
Please check out last week’s launch post if you missed it!
Being in New York has allowed me to meet some incredible people working in the Future of Learning and Education Technology spaces. Our conversations have inspired me to start writing and sharing regularly again. One of the people whose work is worth talking about is Megan O’Connor, a new(ish) friend but an old mainstay in the Edtech space. I spoke with her a few weeks back about:
The past, present, future of EdTech;
Converting the imposters;
The Will Work for Education mentality; and
Education-as-a-(necessary)-benefit.
As always, thank you for being here. I really appreciate you sticking it out with me, and for sending any thoughts and feedback you have about what you read!
Even if you haven’t been following it in real time, it’s not hard to imagine how drastically education and education technology (EdTech) has changed over the last eighteen months.
Megan O’Connor is in a powerful position to share just how much things have shifted, given she’s been in this space for over a decade. In her role as a founder, operator, investor, and public company leader in the space since the early 2010s, she has seen it all.
Oh, that’s cute was the response Megan got time and again doing the rounds in her early years as an EdTech entrepreneur. She heard that EdTech wasn’t a real sector. That it was social impact, that it couldn't be a for-profit industry, that no unicorns could come from this space. This was the message she’d heard for years from VCs, from her fellow founders, and at tech conferences like SXSW.
For context EdTech 1.0 was primarily focused on the K-12 experience, while EdTech 2.0 was the first inkling of how this space could create an alternative to higher ed. Companies like Flat Iron and Lambda School started coming up, introducing the idea of for-profit education entities promising a better ROI. Even then, Megan notes, not that many people paid attention.
Until everything changed…
“The pandemic hit, and the addressable market of people who needed access to online learning was suddenly everyone on the planet. The era we're now in with EdTech 3.0 means that the Future of Work and EdTech are now one and the same. I would say HR tech, skills mapping, hiring, and re-skilling, are the same conversations that are happening across the EdTech community. We're in a real blurred-line-state between work and learning.”
For Megan, it is clear that the distinction between learning and work is greyer than ever. Using our discussion as a launching point, I wanted to examine the different educational paths now available for the working adult.
What options are there for someone who is thinking about how to attain new skills but can’t afford to leave the workforce?
Or someone who is disengaged with their work but is seeking growth?
And what about someone who needs to retrain but doesn’t feel like there’s an option out there for them?
Let’s dive into these 3 very different members of the modern workforce.
(Note: EdTech 3.0 should not be conflated with the intersection of web3 and Education. More on web3 + Education in my next post with Brian Flynn)
The Imposter Worker
Those workers who aren’t actively thinking about upskilling.
This is a population I’ve been trying to understand and support ever since I started this newsletter. I put the question to Megan—why are workers whose jobs are becoming obsolete not actively investing in training? Without hesitation, her response “storytelling.” The reason why people don’t invest in upskilling/reskilling is, “they don’t think it’s possible.”
As the Head of Strategic Partnerships at Chegg, Megan is thinking about this a lot and is currently building out an initiative to solve this very real PR problem. Their research shows that the vast majority of potential adult learners have imposter syndrome. Thoughts like “someone like me doesn't fit in a continuing education program,” or “I'm not meant for a boot camp,” and “I'm not meant for a community college course” are common. In response to this, she’s focused on building out resources to effectively market what the education experience would look like (and how it can be achievable) to the frontline worker.
“You've got to really show frontline workers other individuals like them that have gone into this program. Show them success stories. Here's what those success stories look like. Here is what the actual learning experience will look like.
Until you help people get over the imposter syndrome, they'll always feel like an outsider.”
It’s not enough to just give people the tools. You have to show them how to use them.
The Will-Work-for-Education Worker
Work has changed. Many, if not all, in the workforce will need to change with it.
But when and how does one adapt and learn something new while also working? For many, taking time off to “go back to school” is not a luxury they can afford.
Is there an obvious solution? I ask Megan.
“The greatest thing that somebody who is an hourly or low-wage worker can do is to end up at a company that has a policy to invest in their education. [A company that says they] will provide you the dollars to do so. [A company that offers] to do it in a no cap payment way. [A company that will] adopt programs that are the number of hours a week that they believe that you can actually deal with while still working.”
This concept, which I am dubbing as “will-work-for-education,” provides a real opportunity for the nature of the employer-employee relationship to change for the first time, in a long time. Employees will no longer take a job based simply on day-to-day tasks, or even chase the highest salary, but rather turn to the job(s) that grants them the greatest access to (employer-supported) education. Megan points out that this is already happening and will continue to grow in popularity to the point of necessity.
The best example of this is Amazon, one of the largest employers in the United States. Their upskilling programs are designed to remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money. They do this despite knowing the upskilled employee will now have access to a larger pool of jobs, including those outside of the opportunities offered at Amazon.
This trend is bound to proliferate across all industries and affect the nature of where we access education as adults. I predict learning on the job will become an explicit and official part of any lifelong learning journey, and a natural extension of a company’s recruiting and retention policy.
The Beneficiary Worker
For those who aren’t familiar, the Great Resignation is upon us. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September. This is a record rate and represents 3 percent of the US workforce. This is a very real problem for all employers who are struggling to retain workers in the face of this tidal wave of resignations.
As described by Texas A&M psychologist Anthony Klotz (who coined the term), this trend of employees leaving their jobs en masse over the last year is due to "pandemic epiphanies." Megan is acutely aware of this problem and believes one of the main ways employers can stem the tide is through education.
The major employers, specifically in the US, are investing a lot of time, energy, and human capital internally on how they leverage education as a benefit subsidy. [They are asking me,] How can we as a company solve our talent issues, and our retention issues, through education?
Workers continue to name better compensation and improved work/life balance as the top reasons to move jobs. But one of the best new ways to distinguish themselves as a desirable place to work, in this hyper-competitive remote-first market (where a salary bump and work from home Fridays is no longer enough), is to provide education-as-a-benefit.
But take note, for this group of workers education-as-a-benefit should not be confused with corporate training.
Education-as-a-benefit is just that: a benefit. It’s the same kind of incentive as the offer of a gym membership. Employers should be offering access to their employees’ choice of education. Period. It’s part of what Megan refers to as offering access to a parfait of learning. Every employer needs to leverage education as part of their retention strategy to help keep the roughly 65% of people who say they are currently disengaged at work on their payroll.
From Imposter to Beneficiary
It is increasingly clear no single solution to solve the skills/education gap exists. What is clear is that our reliance on corporations to educate the workforce will continue to grow. Employer-supported education is currently our best shot to keep up with the shifting landscape and diverse needs in the new world of work.
For employers: EdTech 3.0 will continue to evolve. All organizations will need to turn to learning and development partners to develop programs that are relevant to their business and their employees.
For employees: The self-fulfilling prophecy for the adult learner is that the more you learn, the greater job opportunities you will have, and the more competitive your job, the more learning options will be at your disposal.
After School Activities with Megan O’Connor:
Check out Megan’s personal website.
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