Original article by Amber Burton appeared in Protocol
Enterprise-focused ed tech is having a moment. As organizations seek to skill up and retain their staff in a tight labor market, corporate learning and development budgets are bursting at the seams. Because of this renewed interest, a once-stagnant industry is now rife with innovation, including live learning, more individualized courses and even ed tech on the blockchain.
Investors spent over $2.1 billion on skilling companies over the past year alone, according to data from Crunchbase. The motivation: helping companies solve the challenge of upskilling, reskilling and training employees.
Hybrid learning has existed for quite some time, but is now becoming a more common model for corporate training and upskilling. Merav Yuravlivker, CEO and co-founder of Data Society, a company that provides data training for organizations, has witnessed the shift. Data Society has always been an instructor-led organization, but Yuravlivker said more companies have been attracted to these live courses as they gain a better understanding of employees’ needs.
“There are so many asynchronous resources that are out there, and every single organization that we work with tends to have a platform already in place. But the challenge that they’re seeing is that it doesn’t fundamentally change the behavior of staff,” she said. “And sometimes it’s hard for employees to go in and learn on their own and get that level of motivation and continuous learning.”
