Today, seven in 10 American adults are social media users, with Facebook being the most widely used platform, followed by Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With so many employees already using social technologies in their personal lives to connect with one another and share and gather information, it's only natural that many forward-looking companies have leveraged social media for learning.

Talent development functions are increasing their focus on self-guided development, which makes user-generated content learning content created by employees and shared using social mediaa natural fit for their needs. Instead, they build cultures that emphasize trust, teach employees how to share meaningful content, and formalize policies that clearly spell out expectations for social media use.To better understand the strategies and practices talent development leaders are using to leverage social learning effectively, the Association for Talent Development (ATD)...

The argument: Social collaboration tools make it easier and cheaper for employees to learn from one another. Most everyone is on social media, so it makes sense for talent development functions to consider using these platforms to engage employees in the learning process. But is it as simple as instructing learners to sign on to a platform to ask and answer work-related questions? Do employees truly learn this way?