Elenta is improving what you remember from workplace training (spoiler alert: it’s currently only 10%)

Corporate learning is a huge industry. Globally, AU$54 billion is spent on externally facilitated workshops a year.

Despite that, McKinsey research identifies that only 10% of learning is retained. And when Learning and Development (L&D) consultants need to demonstrate their value and reinforce learning activities to improve results, this is a significant problem.

To combat this, Elenta co-founders Anshul Jain and Michael Tan have designed a cloud-based software solution to help L&D consultants reinforce facilitated learning. It is a behaviour change platform designed to solve the problem of learning retention.

“We feel we can capture and even expand that market by increasing the efficacy of learning programs,” said Jain.

Current corporate learning is video or classroom style. It is hard to remember and apply learning this way. Elenta takes the best parts of one-on-one learning and makes them personalised and accountable. The aim is to integrate knowledge and embed this into daily work.

“Most corporate learning fits in two categories,” said Tan.

“Firstly, there’s e-learning which is cheap, but not particularly impactful.  Secondly, there’s facilitated workshops, which are great for knowledge transfer, but not very scaleable.”

“Elenta offers a third path. We let businesses combine the richness of face-to-face learning with the scale of technology to help learners put their new skills into practice during their day to day work.”

The startup’s current clients are in the human resources and learning and development spaces.

“We partner with L&D consultants, coaches and workshop facilitators, said Tan.

“They leverage their trusted relationships to on sell us to their end corporate clients.”

By making it easy to build and automate learning reinforcement programs, Elenta helps L&D consultants save time, drive ongoing behaviour change and win or retain clients. It builds a solution through a six-month program, which converts companies to clients and maximises company learning.

“After a workshop, we help learners apply their new knowledge over the next few weeks or months,” said Jain.

“And once clients see the impact and understand the ROI, they start using Elenta throughout their organisation. In fact, we’re already working with Bupa’s internal facilitators.”

Elenta looks for skills that are not produced and are learned on the job. Companies need to become like schools. Elenta are helping close the skill gap by being better at up-skilling and improving education. They aim to have a long-term impact on workplace learning.

“We integrate with over 2,000 popular business applications,such as Salesforce, to close the loop on learning programs,” said Jain.

“For example, if a business was running a sales training program, the next time a learner opened a lead in Salesforce, we could trigger a high relevant contextual knowledge bite.”

There is a trend towards micro learning in the education system and there are an increasing number of different skills needed at different speeds. The industry is at a tipping point.

“People know that the learning could be improved,” said Tan.

“For over 100 years, we’ve understood Ebbinghaus’ ‘forgetting curve,’ which states that unless knowledge is reinforced, learners forget over 60% in just a few days.”

“We solve that problem by embedding learning in the flow of work. Companies today are under increased pressure to maximise the business outcomes of organisational learning, and they’re looking for solutions like ours.”

Elenta are currently at pilot stage. Eventually the vendor agnostic platform will become self-service and distributed more widely.

“At the moment we partner with L&D consultants, coaches and workshop facilitators,” said Tan.

“They leverage their trusted relationships to on sell us to their end corporate clients. We currently have nine pilot programs with corporates such as Domain.”

So, what’s next for Elenta?

“As the only player to actually motivate behaviour change and track ROI, we’re in a strong position to aggregate learners, consultants, clients and program performance data,” said Jain.

“We aim to be the platform that global corporate L&D runs on.”

• Elenta was part of Antler Australia’s Sydney accelerator program. Applications for the next cohort can be made here. StartupDaily is the official media partner of Antler Australia’s Demo Day.