Experiential Learning Update from Alex Fahie, CEO at Ethical Angel

I think we may have changed talent development forever...

Since Ethical Angel's inception in 2018, we have been working with businesses to offer their members, clients and alumni access to valuable, virtual, skills-based volunteering.

This was our focus from the start, as we saw virtual, skills-based volunteering as the only way we could offer value to all, at limitless scale.

And, I am delighted with the results. Dozens of businesses subscribing, thousands of volunteers supporting causes in 52 countries - and, also the realisation that employees were using the volunteering experiences to do more than create impact. They were using Ethical Angel to grow themselves.

Experiential Learning - it isn't new... but offering it to every single employee, as a way to develop necessary 'power-skills' as part of their personal aspirations... that is!

We ran focus groups with the volunteers and spoke with their managers, learning experts, consultants and advisers. We wanted to know what they were all looking to gain from the volunteering opportunities, and what we at Ethical Angel could do to improve their experience. 

The same key concepts kept coming up:

• Power "soft" Skills
• Self Assessment
• Personal Aspiration
• Skills Mapping
• 360 Reflection

So the Ethical Angel team got creative, and then more and more excited. We realised, that with some tweaks, we could use the same experiences that our marketplace was capturing for volunteering, for experiential learning.

Experiential learning is, in essence, the process of developing new skills or knowledge through doing, rather than reading, watching or listening. It is the most natural and effective way that we learn. As such, experiential learning has much better rates of engagement, long-term retention and transferability than other methods of learning. Experiential learning lends itself to richer skill development, by allowing opportunities for:

• Experimenting and gaining tangible evidence of skills in action
• Connected up learning to previous understanding and self-reflection
• A chance to have real world impact during the learning process itself, which is hugely motivational
• Individuals to take responsibility for their own learning, and to gain a richer understanding as a result
• Building confidence that skills learnt can be applied to a variety of contexts

Now, through our unique platform, it is possible to offer experiential learning to all of your employees. Thanks to this development, HR teams will be able to add a whole new dimension to their training programmes, supplementing theoretical learning with applied experiences to consolidate knowledge or flipping learning altogether and embracing a 'learning by doing' approach. 

Most important of all, the true winners here are employees who's learning experiences will be richer for this new method of learning, and charitable causes that benefit from the skilled support they receive as a result.

We are truly excited to see companies embrace this new opportunity and are here to talk to anyone that is considering how they can integrate experiential learning into their learning and development programme.

For more information on our solution please book a demo today, or download our brochure by clicking the link below: