According to the most recent U.S. Jobs Report, employment is growing at the fastest rate since August 2020. With people getting back to work following the pandemic, organizations need to ensure their employees have the tools and training they need to succeed from anywhere.

For years organizations have been using myTrailhead to onboard and reskill employees, but now Salesforce is making it even easier. Salesforce Learning Paths surface personalized learning content directly in Salesforce, empowering employees to learn in the flow of work, when and where they need it most. According to new research, 80% of employees find it easier to retain information they learn on the job, compared to a siloed training. 

We sat down with Scott Davison, Director of Global Sales Excellence at Elekta to learn how the company is approaching online learning with myTrailhead and Salesforce Learning Paths.

Q: Can you tell us about Elekta and how you’re using myTrailhead? 

Elekta is a leader in precision radiation medicine, and our mission is to ensure that anyone with cancer — anywhere in the world — has access to the most precise radiotherapy treatments. 

“Trailhead and myTrailhead’s “trails” are the learning paths for our employees, and it has become invaluable in helping us scale learning across our entire organization in an approachable, bite-sized way.”

Scott Davison, Director of Global Sales Excellence, Elekta

Our sales team was the first to use myTrailhead, and today, our service, marketing, order fulfillment, supply chain, finance and HR teams around the world use it to onboard employees. Trailhead and myTrailhead’s “trails” are the learning paths for our employees, and it has become invaluable in helping us scale learning across our entire organization in an approachable, bite-sized way.

Q: Why is ongoing learning so important for sales teams within the healthcare industry?

The technology we’re selling is cutting-edge, and it’s developing at a rapid rate. We must constantly educate ourselves on best practices, the best products and the latest innovations in the industry. From end-to-end, we need to consistently keep up with the changes, and myTrailhead and Salesforce Learning Paths are perfect solutions for delivering information to our employees so they can stay on top of everything that’s going on in our world.

Q: How has Salesforce Learning Paths helped your sales team in their day-to-day work?

Although we’re only in the pilot phase, Salesforce Learning Paths has already enabled us to do amazing things. Now that the trails are built directly into Salesforce workflows, our employees are becoming more aware of and engaged by the opportunity to learn. Learning is no longer happening in a vacuum, it’s served up to the employees in the places they are already working.

We’re actively using this practice to help onboard new employees. All materials are easily accessible, meaning that employees are getting a more engaging experience by learning in the flow of their work. In addition, every time we launch new training, we can assign it to any employee who needs it, equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need to sell new and existing products and features.

And since trails are built right into the Salesforce platform, managers can access analytics that show which content is performing well. Alongside this, we’re incorporating employee feedback to make sure we are continually improving the learning experience.

Q: In what ways do you see your use of myTrailhead and Salesforce Learning Paths evolving moving into a post-pandemic business landscape? 

myTrailhead is a mobile-friendly platform and it’s easy to consume information no matter where you are in the world – so our employees can train from anywhere. We’re no longer tied to a physical office, or even our computer screens for things like learning. There’s incredible value in that, and it is a big jump from what we were used to pre-pandemic.

“The world will be more normal but still very different, and that applies to our employees’ habits, expectations and capacity to work. That’s why we’re loving Salesforce Learning Paths – because it’s focused on keeping learning light but powerful.”

Scott Davison, Director of Global Sales Excellence, Elekta

In a post-pandemic world, we’re going to be traveling again, so there will be less time to sit in front of a computer. The world will be more normal but still very different, and that applies to our employees’ habits, expectations and capacity to work. That’s why we’re loving Salesforce Learning Paths – because it’s focused on keeping learning light but powerful. 

Gone are the days of employees sitting through two hour PowerPoints in the name of learning – it just doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, why not create a set of trails that you can assign to new team members? That’s an exciting way we’re looking to leverage these new Salesforce Learning Paths features.

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What are the healthcare industry’s main pain points when it comes to learning? How have myTrailhead and Salesforce Learning Paths helped to address them?

It’s a complex industry; we work with multiple people from various backgrounds and specialisms – each requires learning content that is customized to their specific needs and expertise.

Onboarding is where myTrailhead and Salesforce Learning Paths make a huge impact. It’s not an easy business to wrap your head around, and the trails create an experience where new employees are constantly learning, diving deep on our business and being recognized for it. 

We also take the gamified experience within Trailhead a step further by adding a physical certificate for employees who reach 10,000 points by completing a variety of trails and making it known to the entire organization. Positive engagement should be a natural response to great work, no matter what level you are. And we’re still early days, but we expect the popularity of our trails to grow massively over the next couple of years.

Was there a use of myTrailhead that surprised you? 

We recently did a soft skills training that was very well received. I was surprised because I assumed technical skills training would be more relevant, but this training was about the psychology of sales and the psychology of developing a sales approach. That’s a unique benefit of myTrailhead; you can see what people are most interested in learning about. 

Another pleasant surprise was that we’re no longer creating PowerPoint presentations that get converted into trails — everything now goes through myTrailhead. We’ve effectively cut out several hours of admin work, which was an unexpected benefit, especially for our busy sales teams! 

Read more about Salesforce Learning Paths and the impact of continuous learning on employee engagement and productivity.