Personalized Learning Made Simple
Solving the mystery of personalized learning, one skill at a time
Reaching your business goals starts with having the right people in the right roles. But uncovering hidden skills, or knowing which ones you’ll need next, can feel impossible. You don’t have time to assess every employee, and when new challenges arise, you’re stuck asking: What skills are missing? Who already has them? How do we level up fast?
That’s where workforce assessment and personalized learning come in. Assessment shows you where you are. Personalized learning gets you where you want to go.
The best part? It’s easier than you think.
This guide walks you through building a tailored learning strategy that drives results and supports every learner’s journey. Because when your people grow, your business does too.
Step 1: Mission brief: define the target
You can’t close a gap you can’t see. Before you can develop your people, you need a clear picture of the skills that actually matter for your business goals. That starts with building a skills taxonomy, your classified blueprint for the capabilities your organization needs to innovate, grow, and stay ahead.
But here’s the twist: Sometimes you don’t even know what intel you’re missing. New priorities, emerging tech, shifting markets—it’s a constantly evolving mission.
Bottom line: This is where the mission begins. Personalized learning doesn’t start with content, it starts with clarity. A clear plan, backed by real data, ensures you’re aiming at the right targets from the start.
Pro tip: You don’t have to go rogue. Building a skills taxonomy from scratch can feel like cracking a complex code, but you’re not alone in the field. Tap into trusted intel: research, benchmark data, and pre-mapped skill frameworks tied to common roles. Then tailor it with your organization’s unique needs and nuances to complete the blueprint.
Step 2: Survey the landscape – Uncover Skills in Your Organization 🔍
Now that you’ve mapped the mission-critical skills your organization needs, it’s time to investigate what’s already on hand. Who’s quietly mastered exactly what you’re looking for? Who’s ready for their next assignment?
Workforce assessment is your intel-gathering mission. It gives you a full read on the skills your team already possesses, beyond what’s on paper or visible in day-to-day work. Think of it as your high-tech surveillance tool: revealing hidden strengths, surprising expertise, and untapped potential across your org.
Pro tip: With the right talent growth engine, you get the full dossier, so you can deploy the right people, close real gaps, and move your team into action.
What works for us: At OpenSesame we use Oro, a talent growth engine to help us stay mission-ready. Click here to learn more about what this product can do for you.
Step 3: Deploy the plan and accomplish your mission
You’ve decoded the skills your organization needs. You’ve uncovered the strengths hidden across your workforce. Now it’s time to activate your team with precision.
That’s where personalized learning becomes your secret weapon. By aligning development paths to both your business goals and each individual’s unique skillset, you make learning more relevant, more meaningful and far more effective. In fact, employees are up to 60% more engaged when the learning is tailored to them.
This isn’t a one-time operation. It’s an ongoing mission, and you need the right tools in your arsenal.
Start with a robust course marketplace to meet every learner where they are, whether they’re on the front lines, leading global teams, or somewhere in between. Add in a course-creation tool to create fully customized courses and tailor training for different regions, roles, or moments that matter.
And don’t forget mission control: a talent growth engine that gives you real-time intel on skills progress across your org. See what’s landing, what needs adjusting, and how learning is helping you hit the targets that matter most.
What works for us:
- We use Simon, our course-creation tool to create and translate learning so it resonates with every agent on the team. Learn More About Simon
- The OpenSesame marketplace offers a wide range of expertly curated courses—each one rigorously vetted for quality—so you can match any mission, in any role, anywhere in the world. Take a Guided Tour Today and see for yourself.
Meet Oro: Your engine for talent growth
Personalized learning needs more than good intentions. It needs intelligence.
That’s where Oro, OpenSesame’s new talent growth engine, comes in. Oro helps you
uncover your workforce’s hidden strengths, map them to strategic goals, and power personalized learning experiences that actually move the needle.
Whether you’re in HR, L&D, IT, or talent development, Oro makes it easy to go from “we think” to “we know”—and from “one-size-fits-all” to “just right.”
Ready to unlock your organization’s secret skills?
Resources: Dive Deeper Into Personalized Learning 📚
Looking for more insights on how to build a skills-first workforce? Explore our expert resources:
[Webinar: Dani Johnson Skills Webinar] – Register to see how leading organizations are leveraging personalized learning.
[Color Quiz] – Discover your unique learning style in just a few clicks. Take our fun, visual quiz to see what your color choices and job title reveal about how you learn best! You can also forward the quiz to your team members to learn how they learn best!