Living in the last 20 plus years, it’s been interesting to see how more ubiquitous it’s become to learn at work and see how knowledge is kept for jobs. When I started in the workforce, there were paper notebooks or binders of employee manuals and maybe a workbook of questions to test what was learned. HR would need to schedule multiple meetings to share one policy. If there was a video, it was on a VHS cassette. it was all stored in three-ring binders or filing cabinets in a room or office. The accuracy of the information was always questionable because it could have been out of date. But we are firmly in the 21st century, Digitization has firmly taken hold in the workplace and made learning more ubiquitous.

According to Talented Learning’s article, Why So Many LMS Vendors, there were more than 800 Learning Management Systems (LMS) in 2019 which creates a single place for lessons and courses for training and HR policy communication to be held in the cloud. Since most LMS are usually SaaS cloud systems, they can be accessed by any workstation or home office. The materials in LMS can easily be shared too.

There are other systems in a modern organization that contributes to the ubiquity of learning in the workplace. Knowledge Bases collect articles and notes held in a common database that can be accessed and edited by those doing the work. With Microsoft 365 and Google Apps, even the smallest business can have a collection of documents and files that can be easily accessed by any stakeholder. Email and chat contribute to the workplace by making Trainers, HR Representatives, and Subject Matter Experts available for questions.