Legal industry most social media friendly among professional services providers

LONDON - Nov. 28, 2013 - PRLog -- The research, conducted by Towards Maturity (the not-for-profit benchmarking organisation) and training provider Commelius Solutions, is a part of the ‘21^st century learning for 21^st century legal firms’ campaign. It collates feedback from 21 UK legal organisations and compares it with L&D insights from businesses in other industries.

As many as 93% of legal organisations allow their staff access to social media at work; it’s nearly 30% more than average for other sectors, according to the study. However as few as 8% of Legal L&D professionals blend the use of several different learning technologies (from social media for collaboration to content delivery) in their design of learning.

“These numbers show that legal staff have more opportunity than most to connect and collaborate with peers. But what’s really surprising is the fact that though the vast majority of the firms allow their staff to use their social media at work, they are at the same time not embracing social learning and incorporating it in their L&D strategies”, says Vicky Jones, MD at Commelius Solutions.

She believes that this stems from low adoption of learning technologies by the legal sector, which was also revealed by the study.

Laura Overton, MD of Towards Maturity said ‘ The Towards Maturity Learning Landscape studies with knowledge workers in the sectors highlight that staff rate collaboration and working with peers as one of the most useful methods for learning what they need for their job. With such great access to social media, the legal sector has e a great opportunity to facilitate learning through wider networking and collaboration.’

Jones adds, “Today social media are such a big part of our everyday lives. We use it all the time to share and gain information, exchange experiences and comments, get inspirations, look for recommendations, etc. Twitter is one of the first media people access to find interesting news. Why not use people’s natural ability to share and communicate with each other and their already intuitive use of social media, and integrate it with learning and development strategy for the benefit of your business?”

Being one of the most social media friendly industries already opens many learning opportunities for legal firms. What they need to start doing now is embrace the learning element of social media and start capturing the knowledge share among their staff.

More information on Towards Maturity and Commelius’ research can be found in the whitepaper ‘21^st century learning for 21^st century legal firms’ available at www.commelius.com/legal-industry-learning

To learn how to introduce social learning into the workplace, readers can download a free 8 step guide to successful social learning (http://www.commelius.com/sociallearning/) at work

Towards Maturity’s New Learning Agenda with more information on the learning landscape study is available at www.towardsmaturity.org/2013benchmark

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About Towards Maturity

Towards Maturity is a not-for-profit community interest company providing an independent benchmarking practice in the application of learning innovation to accelerate business performance. Towards Maturity's services leverage the wealth of data provided by its internationally recognised longitudinal benchmark study based on the input of 2,900 organisations and 10,000 learners over 10 years. Free case studies and resources are available to the community at www.towardsmaturity.org

About Commelius Solutions

Commelius Solutions is one of Europe’s leading providers of training and learning technologies to businesses worldwide, and the trusted partner of many FTSE 250 organisations. Their portfolio includes work with American Express, Hill Dickinson, Clifford Chance, CSC and DHL.

The company uses a combination of different learning techniques such as e-learning and live online learning supported by the latest technology to ensure the most suitable and most effective training method for their clients. Their solutions empower organisations to develop the skills of its people so they can deliver on their business goals while increasing the value of training and reducing its cost.

Commelius (formerly Redtray Solutions) has won numerous awards for their learning services including gold award (http://www.redtray.co.uk/news_2011_02_14.htm) for business transformation project for Royal Mail Group, gold (http://www.redtray.co.uk/news_2010_11_18.htm)for Most Innovative New Product or Tool with MyWorkSearch; and supported Hill Dickinson in winning Business project of the year (http://www.redtray.co.uk/news_2012_03_14.htm) and IT team of the year for their Red October project.

For more information visit: www.commelius.com

Press contact for Commelius:

Aneta Sokolowska

T: +(44) 0790095 8769
E: aneta.sokolowska@commelius.com

For more information, visit: http (http://blog.redtray.co.uk/):// (http://blog.redtray.co.uk/)blog (http://blog.redtray.co.uk/). (http://blog.redtray.co.uk/)commelius.com/, www.lmswishlist.com