- Webinar
Just-in-Time Learning Strategy: Key Insights from Panopto’s Webinar Panel
The modern workplace faces a paradox: organizations invest heavily in training, yet employees consistently report they can’t find the information they need to do their jobs. This disconnect reveals a fundamental misalignment between how companies deliver learning and how work actually happens.
On November 13th, Panopto, with Training Magazine co-hosted a webinar that tackled this challenge head-on. “From Formal Training to Just-in-Time Learning” brought together three practitioners navigating this transformation daily: Amy Clark, Chief Operating Officer at Panopto; Amy Lang, Head of Talent for North America at Colliers International; and Julia Velloso, fractional Head of People and executive coach. Their conversation revealed not only the theoretical promise of just-in-time learning but also the practical realities of its implementation across industries.
The Access Problem: When Training Becomes Invisible
“Traditional training builds an important foundation to set the stage,” Clark opened, “but it often assumes perfect timing that employees will use what they learn right after they learn it. But we all know that rarely happens.”
The research reveals the scope of the challenge: 49% of employees cannot access the information they need to do their jobs effectively. Even when training exists, 43% report it was ineffective because it came at the wrong time, and 70% of knowledge is forgotten within a week when employees lack immediate opportunities to apply what they’ve learned.
Traditional training operates on a flawed assumption: that employees will retain and apply information weeks or months after initial exposure. The reality of knowledge retention tells a different story. When formal training becomes divorced from application, it creates a costly cycle of reteaching, productivity loss, and increased support escalations.
“Our opportunity,” Clark explained, “is to shift from training as an event to learning as a utility – something people can access anytime, anywhere, when it matters most.”
Defining Just-in-Time Learning: Beyond Microlearning
Just-in-time learning is often conflated with microlearning or bite-sized content, but the distinction is critical. While format matters, the defining characteristic is contextual availability, delivering specific, relevant information at the moment of application.
Lang brought this to life with a concrete example from Colliers: “We had built a big instructor-led virtual program: three virtual modules over six hours. The whole goal was to help our client-facing professionals be better at pitching and presenting. Through feedback and piloting the program, we really realized there were some tangible moments that would work better as just-in-time learning.”
The result? The team reduced the instructor-led portion by 90 minutes. “This was huge,” Lang emphasized. “Time is money for our sales professionals, so giving them the tools they need to incorporate into their workflow was truly valuable.”
This manifests across multiple use cases:
- Safety and Compliance
- Operational Efficiency
- Sales Enablement
- Knowledge Preservation
The Human Reality of Learning
Velloso offered a metaphor that captured how fundamentally behavior has changed: “Every time I go to descale my espresso machine, I’m looking at the same DeLonghi video online because I know it has the information I need. Even if I could find other information that would help, I know that particular video has what I need.”
She then posed the critical question: “But now what if it wasn’t my espresso machine, but was a process that can change? Or I’m looking up our customer policies and communicating the wrong thing because I’m grabbing the file that I’m familiar with, but that hasn’t been updated?”
This insight reveals the stakes. As Velloso explained: “As humans, we overvalue the advice of people we know and trust. So as a leader, I want to get ahead of that and help the right content be readily available so that managers are empowered with the right information and helping employees in the best way possible.”
The Architecture of Accessible Knowledge
Effective just-in-time learning requires more than good intentions; it demands infrastructure. Three elements prove essential:
Searchability and Findability
Video has become the go-to format for just-in-time learning thanks to its engagement and powerful searchability. With Panopto, employees can record and share anything: onboarding, demos, leadership updates, and every video is transcribed and indexed so they can jump straight to the exact moment they need.
The real value is accuracy. Instead of relying on outdated documents or random YouTube tutorials, employees get trusted, up-to-date information.
Integration into Workflow Tools
Learning technology only works when it blends seamlessly into everyday workflows. If employees have to stop what they’re doing, open an LMS, and hunt through old recordings, they’ll turn to quicker but less reliable sources instead.
When knowledge appears directly inside the tools people already use, Teams, Slack, Salesforce, and CRM systems, learning becomes effortless. The goal is simple: surface the right information at the right moment so the technology fades into the background and the learning moment takes center stage.
Dynamic Content Management
Just-in-time learning addresses a key L&D challenge: keeping content current. Traditional updates, like weekly emails or static manuals, often leave employees behind and prone to mistakes.
When learning is drawn directly from actual work (recorded processes, captured expertise, or documented procedures), it stays naturally relevant. As processes evolve, new recordings automatically become the updated learning content.
This approach also reduces maintenance: instead of rewriting entire manuals, organizations update only what has changed, keeping knowledge accurate and easy to manage.
Measuring Impact: From Activity to Outcomes
Just-in-time learning requires measuring performance, not participation. Traditional metrics like completion rates reveal little about real impact.
Key metrics include:
Speed to Competence: Onboarding time dropped by nearly a third at one logistics company after replacing manuals with searchable video walkthroughs.
Error Reduction: Fewer mistakes occur when guidance is accessible at the moment of need.
Support Burden: One professional services firm cut helpdesk escalations by 40% using short explainer clips.
Business Outcomes: Metrics focus on results—productivity, faster integration, and performance gains.
Research shows the impact: organizations using embedded video report 77% higher productivity and 64% better performance, while on-demand learning at scale drives 24% higher productivity and 27% faster problem-solving. These are transformative results, not incremental improvements.
The AI Amplification Effect
AI is transforming just-in-time learning in three key ways:
Smarter Search: Employees can find information using natural language and context, not just exact keywords.
Personalized Learning: AI recommends resources based on role, experience, recent activity, or knowledge gaps.
Safe Practice: AI provides low-pressure environments to experiment and learn, helping employees build confidence before applying skills in real situations.
By combining human judgment with AI’s capabilities, learning becomes faster, more accurate, and more effective, helping knowledge stick and reducing the need to unlearn mistakes later.
Implementation Framework: Three Strategic Actions
As the webinar moved toward practical application, Clark offered a clear framework: “Don’t do everything at once. Pick one action, prove the concept, learn, iterate, then expand.”
Anchor to Business Problems
“Start by asking: what business problem are we solving?” Beginning with real pain points, like speeding up new hire productivity or reducing service escalations, ensures stakeholder buy-in and clear success metrics.
Map Critical Workflows
Identify workflows where employees need to be more informed and empowered. Process-heavy, customer-facing, or regulated roles often yield the highest ROI.
Launch Focused Pilots
“You don’t have to start big. Start small… really focus on being as valuable as possible for that specific use case.” Quick, measurable pilots build credibility, demonstrate impact, and create the foundation to scale effectively.
The Evolving Role of Learning and Development
L&D is moving from administering training to enabling strategic learning. Teams now focus on curating knowledge ecosystems and making information easily accessible, rather than delivering full courses.
Successful organizations democratize content creation, empower subject matter experts, and prioritize findability over formal completion. The most effective learning often comes from peer-generated resources (short walkthroughs or quick demonstrations) rather than polished courses, positioning L&D as a driver of change, not just a responder.
From Compliance to Capability
“When people can access knowledge in the flow of work, they feel empowered and valued. They’re not waiting for help. They’re not stuck.”
Accessing knowledge on the job boosts autonomy, competence, and confidence. Research shows 68% of employees prefer learning during daily tasks rather than being pulled from work.
Embedding learning into existing tools and processes helps employees solve problems, perform better, and make decisions, creating real behavior change and giving organizations an edge in talent attraction and retention.
The Strategic Imperative
The future of workplace learning is already visible. Leading organizations have moved beyond asking whether to implement just-in-time learning to optimizing how they implement it. They recognize that in an environment where employees can ask ChatGPT any question instantly, corporate learning must offer something superior: accurate, current, contextual information delivered with the same immediacy.
As workplaces accelerate, as AI transforms expectations, and as competition intensifies, the ability to put the right knowledge in the right hands at precisely the right moment may be the most strategic capability any organization can build.
The question isn’t whether to embrace this shift, but how quickly you can move from training as an event to knowledge as a utility: from courses people complete to answers people find exactly when they need them.
Latest News
-
- Webinar
Transforming L&D with AI: Accessible Knowledge Insights for LIFOW
“Employees aren’t asking for more courses; they’re asking for answers the moment they need them.” This revelation, posed during Panopto’s recent webinar The Future of Learning Isn’t More Training—It’s Accessible Knowledge + AI, set the tone for a conversation that challenged how organizations think about learning and development. The discussion, featuring Dr. Katie Campbell, Senior…
Transforming L&D with AI: Accessible Knowledge Insights for LIFOW
-
- Press
Panopto Named to 2026 GSV 150: Recognized Among the World’s Most Transformational Growth Companies in Digital Learning & Workforce Skills
Panopto, the leader in visual and auditory learning for higher education and enterprise, has been named to the 2026 GSV 150, earning milestone recognition as one of the world’s most transformational growth companies in digital learning and workforce skills.
Panopto Named to 2026 GSV 150: Recognized Among the World’s Most Transformational Growth Companies in Digital Learning & Workforce Skills
-
- Training
Train with Video. Scale with AI.
It starts with something simple. Someone records a quick walkthrough for a colleague. Someone else shares a screen-recorded explainer. A department makes a five-minute how-to. One video turns into five. Then ten. Then a hundred. Before long, your organization isn’t just using video. It depends on it. That’s not a fluke. Video works. It sticks….
Train with Video. Scale with AI.