Learning Conversations

On 23rd March, along with @bbetts @lauraoverton & @JulieWedgwood, I'll be running one of a series of workshops taking a fresh look at elearning.

The notes below are designed to help participants prepare for my workshop. It will be very hands on and interactive. In the afternoon, in Laura's session we will move from this case study approach to one that is much more focussed on the participants' particular contexts.

Any reference, inferred or implied, to real organisations is completely coincidental!

Background

XYZ Solutions Ltd is a 3000 strong global company, involved in providing outsourced IT support.

Within the company there are a number of key functions:

The problem

The company has an integrated customer-relationship management (CRM) system, that was designed to improve efficiencies across all the functions, and to enable consistencies in communication.

However, the promised efficiences have not been realised.

The IT manager has investigated, and discovered that:

• Some sales people are not using the CRM at all - preferring to work with their own spreadsheets
• There is confusion amongst the customer-facing functions over what information should go into what fields
• The quality of technical advice given to customers is varying, mainly because technicians are not documenting calls properly, and there is little aggregation of knowledge by team managers.

Senior management have decided that Learning & Development should be the team to solve this problem.

Success criteria

• Total spend (including travel & subsistence) to be within the allocated budget
• Time away from work for learning to be no more than 1 day per person, with no more than 1 hour in any working day.
• The solution should be sustainable, with minimal ongoing input, to enable new starters to “get with the programme”
• Efficiencies should be realised in both sales and front-office

L&D Culture

Up to now, the company L&D culture has been focussed on face-to-face, classroom-based training. Follow-up reviews indicate that much of the content is irrelevant and poorly presented. Also the training often takes place when the learner is least able to make use of it immediately.

The L&D team has created some elearning materials (using a rapid development tool) around topics such as information security, data protection, diversity and health & safety. Although most people have completed the training, it has had little noticeable impact on behaviours, and the general reaction has been that the elearning was boring and poorly presented.

Elearning is perceived as a poor substitute for attending a face-to-face course.

Solution

The L&D team have developed a programme which comprises:

• Ongoing identification of CRM best practices through a limited number of CRM champions from across the business
• Procuring a series of short, 3 minute videos which highlight the benefits of the CRM system, and focus on specific, centrally-affirmed best practices. These will be hosted in an off-site video-delivery system, with access only for XYZ staff on XYZ hardware.
• Quarterly face-to-face workshops for CRM champions to raise issues, share best practice and create new resources.
• A hints and tips hashtag for CRM champions (and other users) to share their knowledge on the company’s micro-blogging system

They know that, for the programme to succeed, initial and ongoing learner engagement is critical.

Your team has been brought in as consultants to help with this...

Encouraging Engagement

[You will be discussing these questions in small groups on the day - but feel free to comment back on this post for clarification or to test out ideas]

1. What problems can you forsee with gaining and sustaining learner engagement in this programme?
   Hint: Consider access, motivation, communication and management
2. What elements would you like to see within the design of the videos or the delivery system that would specifically encourage engagement?
   Hint: Consider the characteristics of Youtube videos that achieve high engagement, eg. usefulness, quirkyness, comedy. Also consider what gets and keeps people engaged with long term programmes such as video games, TV drama serials, sporting leagues.
3. What should go into the communication plan for this programme?
   Hint: Think about communications in four stages:
   
   Well in advance of start -> Just before it starts -> During -> After
   
4. What specific management practices would encourage engagement?

Related posts: Engaging the unwilling learner