When was the last time you heard a term in your business but couldn’t really say what it meant? “Performance support” is popping up more and more, but can you really define it? Share the basic concepts underpinning it? Describe the business results other companies are experiencing?

The National Park Service (NPS) had a milestone year in 2016. That centennial year didn’t just kick off a second century of stewardship of America's national parks—it also catalyzed a renewed focus for the NPS on employees. To better address the challenges this group faced, the NPS decided to shift its L&D paradigm to a broader learning and performance ecosystem approach.

Knowledge retention for traditional training events is often low. Don’t worry about it. Instead, invest where all learning and performance support really happens—the classroom (10 percent), from colleagues (20 percent), and on the job (70 percent). The magic happens when you can develop and maintain all content in one effort and use it everywhere; that includes at your fingertips—when, where, and how you need it. 

“If you taught them this, why don’t they do it?” Educational services staff at Saint Vincent Hospital got tired of hearing this question and started looking for a new learning paradigm for the institution. They found a solution in performance support. By blending learning opportunities and performance support for associates before a class, during a class, and on the job, organizations are able to significantly impact job performance.

Real-life examples of using xAPI in practice are hard to find, making the move from concept to practice very difficult. As the conversation around xAPI shifts from “just imagine” to “just do it,” designers and developers need more practical examples to build upon.

Enterprise employees need critical information on the job at the time of need. How do today’s learning professionals leverage mobile technology and deliver the right content to the right users at the right time? They have to take into account the complete user experience, including user context, device capabilities and limitations, mobile interface design, and more. How do all of these variables translate into effective mobile performance support?

The world is at a tipping point: Technology connects people, social approaches build community, and the “social age” drives ever more change. But what if people can’t cope? Failure is seen at an individual, organizational, and technical level. How can people become resilient and truly socially dynamic, fully adapted to face the ever more diverse and disruptive challenges they face?

The busy nature of the retail setting makes it a challenge to find ways to extend learning beyond formal training. While this time crunch is real, there’s also a real benefit in being able provide ongoing support for newly learned skills, as this practice and reinforcement can allow people to master new skills faster and with more accuracy. So how do you balance this with the constraints of a busy environment like retail? The solution is one that can seamlessly blend into people’s job responsibilities, providing the guidance they need at the moment they need it—performance support.

Sales employees are successful only if they have time to sell and, more importantly, can complete the process to close the deal. But it takes a long time to get a new salesperson up to speed on a company’s sales procedures, applications, forms, deadlines, and more, and during this process it can often feel to them like drinking from the information firehose. How can we help them quickly get the information they need to do their job well while also preventing them from being overwhelmed by content?

Are you overwhelming new hires with thousands of policies, procedures, and fact sheets in your knowledge base? New hires rarely even know what they’re looking for, much less how to find it. This frustration prevents them from gaining confidence and delays achieving mastery in the job. And let’s face it—even experienced employees can struggle from time to time finding the right piece of information in the knowledge base.