A World Economic Forum report reveals that by 2022 more than 42 percent of jobs will change significantly and will require new skills, such as analytics or complex problem solving. This new point of view resulting from the IT and digital revolution of the 21st century requires an education that is also accessible through technological tools and different devices that facilitate continuous, immediate, adaptable training, and whose effectiveness can be measured instantly: EdTech.
The relationship between education and technology is becoming highly relevant, both in school and professional environments, especially in Industry 4.0, which demands automation in almost all productive sectors.
For Mr. Rodrigo Vargas, founding partner of Hero Guest, a Mexican technology company specializing in training and professional training with microlearning content through an app, comments that digital transformation requires workers to know how to operate all the technological tools and programs, which will continue to change. "That is why at Hero Guest we believe that in work environments the future of education is digital, distance, adaptable, accessible, continuous, and measurable to ensure the execution of what has been learned.”
He explains that technology has made it possible to make the concept of learning more flexible and break with the idea that you can't learn on your cell phone. "From our experience, with technology and good training content that is fun, personalized, accessible, and effective, great results can be achieved. For example, it is possible to increase the degree of motivation of the company's collaborators, since by having the courses on their cell phones they can resolve any doubts while they work, all instantly, quickly, easily, and comfortably. The users feel safe and satisfied knowing that the content is available at the moment they need to learn. Thanks to distance training with microlearning content through the app, we have managed to reduce staff turnover by up to 20 percent in industries such as the restaurant sector, where turnover rates in some cases can reach 80 or 100 percent.”
With the use of new technological tools, teaching content can be adapted to new training modalities. "For example, in the case of training through an app, short contents are required, between five and 10 minutes long, that are mainly visual, with videos and images, and that follow a playful methodology, that is, that apply the mechanics of games in professional training courses,” Mr. Vargas stresses.
Educational technology (EdTech) in training such as that offered by Hero Guest emerged more than five years ago in the restaurant industry. "Both myself and my partner Eduardo Méndez have professional experience in the restaurant sector, but with the closure of consumer centers due to the pandemic, we looked at the training needs in other industries and realized that our EdTech solution is functional for other sectors. This is how we have expanded into the retail sector, where we have success stories such as Miniso, and we operate in industries such as fintech, hotels and FMCG. We recently ventured into the manufacturing industry with Grupo Rotoplas, as well as the insurance sector with Interprotección and mining with Grupo México,” reveals Hero Guest's founding partner.
Customized training content
With a technological solution such as Hero Guest it is possible to develop customized training content depending on the needs of the organization and its structure, both content development for sales, human resources, marketing, and operations areas, to standardize processes and achieve efficiencies in key aspects such as safety, hygiene, operating standards, protocols, service cycle, and co-learning.
"Once the microlearning capsules are created, they are accessible to all the company's employees through their cell phones. In addition, we create new content on a weekly basis and update the courses according to the learning needs at any given moment,” says Mr. Rodrigo Vargas.
He indicates that the main challenge for Hero Guest is to push the Mexican business community to embrace digital transformation and innovate in order to change the business culture.
According to the Mexico Labor Report 2019 of the British recruitment company Hays, only four out of 10 Mexican companies offer training and coaching for their employees.
The founding partner of Hero Guest points out that it has been calculated that almost two points of a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth depend on the capacity of the country and its companies to develop new skills and learning in educational and professional areas. The development of training increases productivity rates and allows for better business results, in addition to raising the level of professionalization of a sector and, therefore, making it more competitive.
According to data from Grand View Research, currently the value of the EdTech market is USD$106 billion and is expected to reach a value of USD$377 billion by 2028 with a compound annual growth rate of 19.9 percent. With these projections, it is a sector that has already taken off globally and is starting to do so in Latin America despite the fact that there are still no unicorn companies -that are valued at more than USD$1 billion- in this region. Companies that achieve this technological adaptation will be more productive and will be able to adapt to changes more easily.
