Augmenting reality - technology is going invisible

Here's my article, just published on Trainingzone as the headline story, exploring how augmented reality and mobile technology promise to radically improve learning effectiveness. Would value your comments and feedback.
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The pace of technological innovation continues to surprise. This week reports suggest that, in theory at least, it will be possible to create new materials that divert light around themselves to render objects invisible. The magical cloaks of Harry Potter (also in the news this week), no longer seem so far-fetched.

The technology of today, however, is also striving for invisibility. It's getting smaller, more integrated and embedded into the world around us. As a result the way in which we interact with it is changing in fundamental ways. This Christmas, one of those must-have gifts is Kinect, the add-on for Microsoft's X-Box game console. Kinect drops the need for a physical controller meaning the user can play a game simply by waving their arms, hands, legs or any other body part for that matter. The reported levels of engagement this generates are profound as the suspension of disbelief, so core to game-play, is deeper and more sustained.

This gesture-based control is all around us, on our smartphones, tablets, touchscreen laptops, TVs and as things develop, on any appliance or surface that needs a communications interface of some sort. But that's not all, technology is becoming wearable in the form of heads-up display glasses that let you watch movies on what feels like a virtual 52" TV screen, cameras that record everything you say and do, storing it in your 'life-cache' or streaming it straight to Facebook for all to enjoy. All this breaks down the barriers between real and virtual worlds.

In fact we can 'augment reality' with applications on our phones that can automatically annotate the world around you (as seem through your camera lens) with useful, contextualised information that helps make better sense of your surroundings and so inform the choices you make. While many of these applications (Layar and Google Goggles are two such examples) are entertainment-oriented and aimed at promoting social sharing or marketing, the additional potential for learning and performance support cannot be ignored. For example, a neat barcoding technology called QR codes, can be used to tag a physical space and with the simple process of pointing your camera phone at the code can automatically call up information stored online that is relevant to that physical place. This is a great way to help new staff navigate around their new workplace, to provide specific health and safety advice for instance or explain how shared equipment works (removing paper jams from the printer perhaps?). Direct links to short 'show me' videos or photos can quickly answer problems or questions and save time for all concerned.

 

As technology becomes transparent – invisible even – we can seamlessly integrate it into our everyday actions, providing valid access to supporting information and guidance. For example, BMW created an intriguing proof of concept video demonstrating how a car mechanic can use heads-up display glasses to guide them through maintenance procedures on a car. The benefits are tremendous as it means a mechanic can service a wider variety of models and handle what are increasingly complex engine systems. It reduces the pressure for "just-in-case" training and emphasises "just-in-time" support. Much of this is not conceptually new. For example I was involved in a similar project in 1992 for Iveco to design a very similar performance support system for truck mechanics which used video to show how to dismantle, fix and reassemble engine systems. What is different is that the technology now is faster, connected, cost-effective, mobile, even wearable.

 

The smartphones and games consoles of today set new precedents for those of us working within learning and development. We can start to break out of the relatively static classroom and design learning support that is location-aware, tapping into shared expertise at the time it has most context and give immediate support on actions taken. This immersive experience is more memorable, actionable and potentially removes the issue of training transfer back into the workplace – there is no need to transfer as you are essentially already there.

 

The design implications are significant and challenge the more structured approach to instruction. Indeed game design offers a powerful motivational model that encourages repeated practice and mastery. Levelling up and achievement systems successfully compel us to try and better ourselves each time. Some of these game environments are becoming incredibly rich and sophisticated, and are hugely effective learning environments, accurately simulating specific real world scenarios.

It is no coincidence that the military, medical and aviation fields are leading in this area given the life and death nature of their respective fields. But as the technology becomes more accessible, this is spilling into other areas such as construction, health and safety, customer service, performance management, contract negotiation and other real-world, complex interactions that many more of us engage in. These simulations don't necessarily have to involve high end 3D graphics and complex artificial intelligence. By using technology to augment the real world around us, we can even more realistically recreate specific situations to test and train responses, working together with the support of other peers and experts, even if they are not physically present alongside us.

 

This is not to say this is entirely for the better. There is always a need for balance and blend. But being able to economically extend our support beyond the natural constraints of the scheduled training event in a classroom can deliver far more effective learning experiences and deliver significant performance improvements to the individual and organisation as a whole.

Learning the LINGO

I had the privilege of speaking at the INGO E-learning Conference at Oxfam House, Oxford today. Fellow speakers included Clive Shepherd, Jane Hart and Rob Hubbard. There is a growing interest amongst charities and other non governmental organisations in more effective and efficient approaches to learning and development. When you have staff, volunteers and other representatives spread across the globe, often in hard to reach areas with little infrastructure and tight budgets it can be a real challenge to provide sufficient training support. E-learning is clearly of value in these situations but also it has to be flexible in its design and delivery to avoid just becoming an expensive white elephant.

Talking of elephants, I gave the audience the benefit of my “elephant in the training room” message – that despite best efforts, much training is delivered by the wrong people, to the wrong people, at the wrong time in the wrong way. What is the result? No learning, no value gained by the individual or the organisation they serve. E-learning is no different – too much of what people experience is plain dull, ironically hard to access and use and similarly lacks relevance. Design is crucial to the success of a learning experience, online or offline. This does not necessarily mean spending large amounts of money on high production values (although that can be sensible and appropriate). Instead, it is developing a more elusive skill – smart selection of design treatments/concepts, clear, energising writing and the appropriate use of media that fit within your project constraints (time, budget, technical).

I used my IMPACT framework to illustrate how e-learning design can be more effective and impactful than the “slide-ware” many people default to creating and even more people have to endure. We can all do much better than this and I’m optimistic that as technology supported learning becomes ever more mainstream, good design will be recognised and valued. After all, the objective is to change attitudes and behaviour in our learners for the long term – and that’s worth dedicating the right level of investment of skill and resource to achieve isn’t it?

Designing e-learning for IMPACT

Creating an engaging, effective e-learning experience can be a daunting task. There are many considerations, the LEAST of which is the technical delivery which most folk normally latch on to. The tools are an enabler, for sure, but the ability to communicate – in words, in pictures, with meaningful interaction, with clarity – is much more important. However, this ability appears to be in scarce supply. Too much of what people experience as “e-learning” makes poor use of the medium, even to the extent of obscuring the key learning messages it intends to convey.

This is a shame as poor perceptions mean that people can come to an e-learning experience already expecting to be bored, uninspired and desperate to secure their “tick in the box” as quickly as possible. It doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be this way. It is hard to hold attention, granted. Distractions abound. Learners can, quite rightly, simply click away if the experience we design fails to offer a compelling enough proposition to stir the necessary self-motivation needed to stay focused or return when circumstances allow. Mandating completion is not enough. We have to persuade and engage – and that takes thought, consideration, creativity and care. It is a false economy to ignore the steps to good design practice. You can, with some guidance, learn to design e-learning that has real IMPACT.

Over the past few months – at both conferences and webinars – I have been describing a model that can be used to successfully audit existing and planned e-learning projects, and become embedded within a e-learning development strategy. The IMPACT model provides a structure for considering six key aspects of effective e-learning design:

Interaction

Multimedia

Personal

Actionable

Challenging

Timing

Let’s take a brief look at each one in turn:


Interaction
Interaction is what makes e-learning different from other media. It should be purposeful, bringing the learner into the content, bring alive a key concept and immerse them in believable scenarios. It is not just “click next to continue” or “click to reveal more information”. Too much e-learning relies on this alone and wonders why it loses its audience’s attention at virtually the first screen.
Good examples of interaction include dynamic models that let you play and explore with variables so you can quickly see the consequences of your actions. This does not have to be complex and expensive. For one organisation, to explain how pensions work, we designed a simple real time graph that allows the learner to change important factors that affect the eventual value of their pension including length of service, contributions and investment performance. Visually simple, the dynamic nature of the interaction quickly demonstrates the effect these have on retirement (frighteningly for many people!). Note that this learning could not easily be achieved any other way than with a good interaction. That’s a good indicator that you are including interaction appropriately and not just to add unnecessary barriers for your learners.


Multimedia
E-learning can draw on any digital asset you can care to mention. Yet we typically settle for text, stock images and clip art. Often there are technical constraints that preclude the use of video and audio. Indeed, there are also learning design reasons why the use of media is inappropriate. For example, for those audiences working in contact centres where the telephone is the primary form of customer communication, it would be good practice to design customer care scenarios that are audio only to provide a model of practice that can be more readily transferred to the work environment.
Where possible though, using video can be emotionally engaging and can realistically replicate real world situations when combined with well constructed interaction. Simulating elements of a job, whether this is real video, 3D animation or an immersive world, or simply photo sequences can provide a meaningful and applied framework for the learner.


Personal
If the message is too generic, bland or full of alien language that is patronising to your intended audience, it is unlikely to resonate. Context is crucial and writing clearly in a tone that fits your organisation’s culture, values and specific work practices makes a huge difference in learner’s taking ownership of the experience you present them with.
Equally, personalising the content to their specific needs, such as their job role, their accessibility requirements (low, high bandwidth option, screen-readers etc) and preferred media can ensure the learner feels in control and can concentrate on the key messages rather than the tool they are using to access them.
Introducing social media can further personalise the experience through access to other peers and expert support where available.


Actionable
Too much training and learning focuses on abstract policies, processes, systems and idealised situations which lack the real hooks and context that allow learners to apply new skills and knowledge back in the work place. The very fact they have had to leave the workplace – physically in the case of traditional classroom training, and cognitively in the case of abstract e-learning content – makes it difficult to transfer the learning experience into practice. You can bridge this gap by closely simulating the work environment in which they need to apply the new skills and knowledge. One example of this is a simulation within a travel agent which trains new staff to sell foreign exchange. This brings together all aspects of the role – operating a computer system, understanding currency, regulatory policy, customer service, sales skills and rapport building. By mixing these activities in a way that mimics the actual job, transfer of the virtual practice is much much easier than if these elements were separately trained.


Challenging
Too much e-learning is too simplistic. It fails to challenge its audience either in its treatment or the difficulty levels of its assessment. There’s almost an unspoken conspiracy that lulls trainers, managers and staff into a false sense of security because they all “pass”. Never mind if any lasting change in performance is seen in the workplace. Challenge the expectations of the learner and provoke an emotional response. Take a stance, use your writing style to set an attitude, create surprise, laughter, fear, whatever is appropriate for your subject matter and audience. Don’t make your interactions too obvious and easy – it’s good to make the learner think carefully before they act or answer. But that’s not to say we want to frighten learners way – the challenges can be structured to support failure positively and use it as a learning experience to move forward. But foremost the learning must be stimulating, cognitively stretching and memorable.
Game designers have evolved highly sophisticated models that make challenges fun, addictive and memorable for it. In particular casual games, with their shared leaderboards, multiple levels, and regular achievements/badge collecting can be used to great effect in learning about product features/benefits, policies, processes and other knowledge heavy areas where repeated exposure improves long term retention.


Timing
Repetition matters more than we like to think. Too many training courses – either in the classroom or as e-learning sessions - are deployed as single events that are completed once and we expect our audience to be trained. The fact is we forget most of what we experience with this one-hit, sheep-dip model. E-learning provides a unique opportunity to structure more frequent, spaced exposure to learning that is interwoven into work practices. This increases learning retention and transfer massively. Thinking in terms of a “campaign” rather than a “course” will change how you design every learning solution towards a smaller, fluid, blended experience. It may have less visible Big Bang, but it will be more effective in building the intended performance change in your audience.


Make an IMPACT
The IMPACT model can act as a useful framework for a more in depth review of how to design more effective e-learning. Anyone of any level of experience, resources, budget can benefit from applying this model to their design activities. While the quantity of e-learning will continue to rise, I’d like to see quality to rise too so that e-learning can really deliver on its promise. We all have a part to play in demanding good design – it makes all the difference.

This blog post is also published here together with lots of videos and examples of impactful e-learning design.

How to roll out knowledge to contact centres

Just published on the popular Trainingzone site. Comments welcome.
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In a real-time business environment, how do you ensure staff are kept fully up to speed on new products and services, while also keeping customers happy? Lars Hyland outlines ways in which technology can improve knowledge, learning and communication in the pressurised environment of the contact centre.
It's hard to keep up, isn't it? Product cycle times are shrinking, in some industries down to a matter of weeks, with the frequency of product and service launches growing each year. Customers are demanding ever more variety and choice, with competition fierce for their money and attention.
Large organisations often struggle to communicate in as timely and consistent a fashion as they would like. Meanwhile, marketing pushes ahead, sometimes leaving sales and service staff struggling to service the resulting enquiries.
With the advent of the internet and the seemingly unstoppable race towards real-time communication, the stakes are raised even higher. So it's not surprising to read the results of the Customer Contact Association's 2009 membership survey indicating a strong trend towards customer self service. Essentially, this means providing the customer with information and services to answer their basic queries and conduct interactions with an organisation, without picking up the phone.
Interestingly, the expectations were not a huge reduction in call volumes, but more of a shift towards agents handling more complex (and emotional) calls. These are more demanding and support another expectation that contact centre staff need to be much less process driven and become knowledge workers who can flexibly address a wide range of issues for the customer.
So how do you keep knowledge workers knowledgeable? That requires a learning culture, regular and effective communication, as well as efficient performance support tools that staff can reliably trust and use with confidence. Let's take a look at how learning technology can be applied to deliver a more agile and dynamic customer service culture.

Build and maintain a product knowledge elearning portfolio

Every product and service your organisation offers to the market can be effectively explained using engaging interactivity, covering the key features and benefits, presenting how they sit within the wider portfolio. There is a commitment required to maintain and update this suite of knowledge modules, but when structured in an easy to access and intuitive fashion they can provide much improved consistency of understanding across your workforce.
The process needs to be fast, flexible and fit with the speed of product development and launch in your organisation - internal processes must be aligned with the e-learning for it to be engaging and responsive.

Virtual practice builds confidence and competence

Simulating customer interaction can help agents and advisors practice and model best practice behaviours. There are often significant constraints that will affect the call outcome based on what can be said, when and how. There is a fine balancing act to be struck between inflexible scripted responses and offering more flexible, "human" conversation, while remaining compliant.

Compliance/regulatory training can be automatically tracked and audited

Keeping compliant is a significant undertaking with high administration costs. Learning management systems automate the collection and reporting of completion data for later auditing purposes. Going beyond the letter of the law it is possible to have employees understand the spirit of the regulation to which they must comply. For example, no-one would argue with the need to protect data and treat customers fairly, but sometimes the regulation can overshadow the core message. Good e-learning design can address this.

Give customers and staff a shared learning experience

In the true spirit of self service, it makes sense to offer a similar experience for your customers and staff that ensures there is a shared understanding in place. A higher budget is often spent on 'superficial' customer communication and marketing than on staff training, often leaving the customer wanting more detail to inform their decision.
Staff also need detail and knowledge in order to serve customers well. Perhaps sharing these budget pots in a more balanced way will result in high quality learning and communication deliverables that will enable customers to self-serve, and contact centre staff to be more enthused and self-motivated about the products and services they offer.
Note that elearning content doesn't just have to sit inside an LMS - it can be on the external website, directly linked to applications your staff and customers use.

Less learning more often - focus on performance support

Product knowledge dates quickly. Pulling staff away from their jobs to sit in training sessions that do little to inspire, much to confuse, only for them to forget most of what was presented is not a productive use of time. Building learning opportunities into the everyday work flow is an essential part of a modern day contact centre environment. (See Less Learning More Often article for more on this).

Start staff learning before they arrive

The pre-induction learning portal is proving to be an excellent tool to dramatically improve new staff engagement and productivity from their very first day. The Aberdeen Group Report on Effective Onboarding Techniques and Strategies made this one of its key recommendations for organisations looking to reduce training costs and improve employee engagement.
As we move out of recession, there will be further pressure to retain talented staff at all levels. There is much evidence to show that staff decisions to stay with an organisation for the long term are strongly influenced by the experience they receive within their first three months of employment. The pre-induction learning portal is an excellent way to bridge the chasm of communication between accepting a new role and arriving on the first day.
Brightwave and Sky, the satellite television and media communications provider, worked together to build a highly engaging pre-induction experience that includes many of the recommendations made above, to good effect. Up to ten hours of learning covering product knowledge, compliance topics, as well as sales simulations, have led to staff arriving confident and competent. This has reduced induction training by one week and measurably improved sales and customer service performance. The portal also won the Most Effective Training Programme award at the recent Customer Contact Association Global Excellence Awards. It's a best practice model well worth replicating.

Serving a wider community

In a globalised and outsource driven economy keeping a consistent level of knowledge amongst suppliers, resellers, customers and your own internal staff can only be managed using technology. E-learning is a cornerstone of that strategy and, with the right design, deployment, and content management practices in place you can keep pace with the rate of change we are all experiencing.
In many respects as we hurtle forward, we need to manage knowledge in new ways. In the future it is less about "know-how" and more about "know-now". That means searching, finding, and acting at the moment of need. Hold on to your hats, it's only going to get faster.

Summary points

• Current trend to customer self-service will lead to a shift in agents handling more complex (and emotional) calls – a positive learning culture with regular and effective communication is essential to keep contact centre staff knowledgeable
• Give customers and staff a shared elearning experience - engaging elearning helps build and maintain product knowledge
• Simulations can help improve customer service and interaction
• Help staff understand the purpose of compliance and regulation with good e-learning design
• Less learning more often – focus on performance support
• Get staff learning before they arrive - the pre-induction or onboarding

Awards: Most effective training + Elearning company of the year

This post is a bit of self congratulatory trumpet blowing, but the past two weeks can’t go by without comment. Last night Brightwave won the E-learning Production Company of the Year Award at this year’s E-learning Age Awards. That’s a fantastic achievement and well deserved – the team are highly professional, talented and great fun to work with. Our clients seem to agree too with comments like:
“…completely agree with the judges comments and for me you were always the front runner…you’ve consistently out performed and out thought your competitors”
It’s great to get a gong, but even better to know that your efforts are appreciated by those who matter most.

Perhaps even more importantly, it’s good to know that the e-learning solutions you design actually work and make a real difference to real people in real need of support. So the previous week it was fantastic to win the Most Effective Training Programme at the CCA-Global Awards for our work with Sky. It’s a real exemplar of how a learning portal can genuinely be easy to access, offering engaging, interactive learning content and produce highly motivated and better performing staff.
It’s made a difference: that’s what it’s really all about. Too little training (whether in the classroom or online) can genuinely say that which is both indictment and an opportunity for positive change. If we can champion quality over quantity we will be making good progress as an industry.
On a wider note, it’s great also to report that Brighton ( probably one of the best cities to live in in the UK) continues to go from strength to strength as a centre of excellence for e-learning design expertise. It’s probably fair to say that the majority of commercial e-learning activity in the UK can trace its roots back to the seaside in the South.
For more on that and awards ceremonies in general, check out Donald Clark’s recent posts on the subject.
Trumpet blowing ends: normal service now resumed.

Onboarding staff in the 21st century

The British Computer Society (BCS) and IT Training Magazine have published my article on how onboarding new staff can be transformed in terms of overall time to full productivity and dramatically reduced training costs. As the economy picks up the quality and efficiency of induction will matter more than ever. What do you think?

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How we work and who we work for is changing rapidly. In an internet-enabled, networked age where we can communicate with anyone, anywhere, in real time, the way in which we acquire knowledge and develop new skills is transforming.

To cope with the pace of economic and social change we must re-evaluate how we train and support our people. The onboarding experience is the crucial start to reaching a desired level of competence and confidence needed to deliver a valuable contribution.

However, this is often sadly neglected. New joiners arrive in their new workplace to discover they are expected to fend for themselves - their manager is too busy fire-fighting, work colleagues are stretched enough getting through the day, let alone having time to 'handhold' someone new.

The induction training is not scheduled for a few weeks, by which time its value is greatly diminished. Furthermore, what about the increasing number of staff working from home or on the move? How do they become integrated into the organisation's culture?

It is no great surprise then that many new joiners don't stay the course. It is recorded that 90 per cent of employees decide whether to leave their new employer within the first six months (recently voiced by Gretchen Alarcon at Oracle).

Measuring time to full productivity of new staff reveals it can take anything between six and twelve months to reach the required levels of competence and confidence to deliver at expected performance levels.

As a result, staff attrition is extremely costly to an organisation. When a staff member leaves, all the investment made in that individual - from recruitment, selection and induction to salary - is lost before they can add any real value.

In areas where there are naturally high levels of staff turnover, such as contact centres and retail, this can amount to large sums of money spent on training and re-training without ever truly improving overall performance.

The Call Centre Association (CCA) claims a failure to retain employees is costing firms up to £1 billion per year and generating employee turnover rates up to 30 per cent. The current economic climate may have dampened these costs temporarily, but with increasing employee mobility, they will rise if not managed more effectively.

Employee engagement

A positive onboarding experience can seriously improve employee engagement. The government (see MacLeod Report commissioned by Lord Mandelson) has recognised the importance of improving employee engagement and its positive affect on productivity. Here's a definition of engagement taken from the report:

'Engagement is about creating opportunities for employees to connect with their colleagues, managers and wider organisation. It is also about creating an environment where employees are motivated to want to connect with their work and really care about doing a good job… It is a concept that places flexibility, change and continuous improvement at the heart of what it means to be an employee and an employer in a twenty-first century workplace.' (Professor Katie, CIPD, 2009)

The report also shows the difference employee engagement can make to the bottom line:

• Engaged employees in the UK take an average of 2.69 sick days per year; the disengaged take 6.19 days. The CBI reports sickness absence costs the UK economy £13.4bn a year.
• 70 per cent of engaged employees indicate they have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs, only 17 per cent of non-engaged employees say the same.
• Engaged employees are 87 per cent less likely to leave the organisation than the disengaged. The cost of high turnover among disengaged employees is significant.

Ensuring that the early onboarding experience is a positive reinforcement of someone's decision to join will make a dramatic difference to these metrics.

Technology, more specifically e-learning, plays a central role in offering a more seamless, continuous support mechanism that simultaneously accelerates learning, releases managers from basic training obligations and significantly reduces time to full productivity.

The pre-induction portal

The provision of online learning and assessment can be used at all stages of onboarding new employees, all managed through a single learning portal. This portal, alongside the corporate website, actively reinforces brand values and culture.

Here are examples of how e-learning can be used to improve efficiency and effectiveness for each stage of onboarding:

Recruitment - potential applicants complete short scenario-based assessments that provide more accurate impressions of the job role. The organisation benefits by encouraging those seemingly best suited to submit an application.

Selection - more rigorous assessment and psychometric testing can further filter applicants prior to, or as part of, the formal interview process. Tests can include realistic experiences that represent the job activities.

Pre-induction - successful applicants can receive additional learning opportunities that are completed in the run-up to their first day. With high levels of motivation and enthusiasm these individuals are in a perfect cognitive state to learn more about their new organisation. Learning modules may cover organisational structure, welcome videos, product knowledge, activity or system simulations (perhaps customer scenarios) and mandatory compliance (like health and safety). Such early learning means new employees arrive on their first day with a high level of confidence and active knowledge. This dramatically reduces time required for further induction training.

Induction period - continuing access to the learning portal carries new employees seamlessly through their first few days. Access to social networking tools accelerate contact with other employees, as well as access to additional learning modules on key systems and processes that were not available during pre-induction.

Ongoing development - these learning activities naturally integrate with existing HR systems to ensure a full record on which the individual can build further training and development as their career develops.

Tracking progress - tracking and reporting facilities allow the organisation to monitor new employees' engagement with learning opportunities. The portal can reward those who demonstrate exceptional levels of motivation and attainment, whilst nudging and supporting those who need encouragement. Equally, identifying early on those new employees who are uncertain of their decision or are likely to fail to integrate is valuable for both the individual and organisation.

Unbeatable business case

For those looking to reduce costs and improve employee productivity, overhauling the onboarding and induction experience is a strong candidate.

Sky, the satellite TV and broadband communications provider, has launched a pre-induction learning portal that has reduced induction time from four to three weeks with measurable improvements in sales and customer service targets. High levels of commitment and enthusiasm shown by individuals completing the pre-induction activities have also been sustained into the workplace.

While many organisations may not be experiencing growth or normal recruitment levels in the current climate, this is likely to change over the next twelve to eighteen months as the economy recovers.

Cost pressures, however, will not go away, so introducing a more cost effective onboarding model must be a priority in order to take full competitive advantage when the upturn arrives. When it does, employees will begin to further flex their new-found freedom and the battle for talent will intensify.

Re-inventing the E-learning Experience

I ran a webinar for the Learning and Skills Group earlier this month on re-inventing the e-learning experience. I mentioned this in a previous post, so let me know what you think of the ideas and examples presented.

Lars Hyland Webinar 090709 Re-inventing the E-learning Experience

View more presentations from Lars Hyland.

How can you show that e-learning is clearly adding value to your business? Learning portals provide a focused, engaging and contextual experience for staff that more directly supports their working day. In this session Lars Hyland demonstrates how global media company Sky is revolutionising its induction programme with a pioneering media-rich portal. Drawing on experience from some of the UK's most recognised brands (Bupa, EDF, Vodafone) Lars will examine:

• Using focused learning portals to solve key business challenges
• Improving performance of new starters with a smart onboarding or induction programme
• How cutting the 'time to competence' clearly establishes the value of learning
• Making 'self-service' performance support easy to use, engaging and effective
• Five tips for building an unbeatable business case

IT training should focus on performance support

Charles Jennings great article on "How not to train" has been featured on trainingzone but I recommend you go back to his blog for a fuller version. His point is clear. Systems training delivers little value (negative value according to Jay Cross' comment) when following the traditional model of delivery. Train weeks before go live, provide little intervening support then let them loose once the system is up and (sort of) running. Might as well as not bothered, says Charles.

Systems rollouts are a specific case of the "elephant in the room" - training delivered by the wrong people, to the wrong people, at the wrong time, in the wrong way. This equates to no learning, and no valued added to individual nor organisation.

Even a good training delivery by the right people to the right people (this is where most training measurement settles for fantastic feedback on happy sheets) if delivered at the wrong time in the wrong way, yields no learning in the long term and no added value.

One point though to consider - if you can design e-learning (in the form of simulations) for delivery prior to go live - accepting that it does not mimic the live system exactly (80/20 rule applies) - you can achieve a great deal in terms of confidence building and familiarity with the underlying business processes the system embodies. This e-learning can then be quickly updated (using the right tools and resources) and used as performance support and ongoing induction for new staff. EPSS can then take the weight going forward.

Of course, nothing beats making a system intuitive to use in the first place. But then I'm now clearly asking too much of the world...

Move aside CPD, UPS is here...

This article originally appeared in Training Journal in June 2009 (PDF). In it I coin the term Ubiquitous Performance Support (UPS) as a better description of how workplace place learning will develop in the future. Comments welcome.

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Lars Hyland investigates how Continuous Professional Development is being transformed by digital connectivity and challenges how we assess competence and performance in the workplace.

The worst recession since the Second World War is having a profound effect on the workplace. Jobs are being lost in almost every sector, some being hit harder than others. Nearly half of the UK workforce plans a career change, by choice or otherwise. So, having relevant, marketable skills and experience is more important than ever and a priority for those wanting to stay in work or search for new work.

Training professionals are in the same position and must also remain skilled, as was recently demonstrated by the CIPD who responded to the changing economic conditions with its own set of redundancies in April. More significantly, perhaps, is the CIPD's own attempt to update its professional development programme and help build the skills of the HR community.

The new ‘HR Profession Map’ replaces the current CIPD Professional Standards and is a result of detailed consultation with HR directors across the main economic sectors, as well as senior professionals and academics. The map describes key HR knowledge areas, associated behaviours and sets out four bands of competence. This is designed to be more relevant to today's HR organisational landscape and deliver "sustainable capability".

Now, this could be said to be the goal for all workers no matter what their discipline, be they engineers or accountants. How do you stay relevant in a highly interconnected, global marketplace? Where does the responsibility lie for learning and development? Is it with the organisation you work for, or with you, the individual?

Personal brand challenges professional qualification as sign of quality

We all have anecdotes about our educational experiences, about how little we remember and how what we do remember has little practical value to the activities and jobs we do. Clearly, education strives to provide a platform for transferable skills, to give us adaptability and resilience to apply what we know in new and constructive ways.

Once in a job, continuous professional development intends to keep skills fresh and relevant, building on our real world experience. But does it? Too often qualifications misrepresent the value and capabilities of the person holding the certificate. All too frequently the curricula fail to keep up with the highly bespoke and rapidly changing realities of the workplace.

In today's digitally connected society, the value of a qualification is in danger of being superseded by a highly public individual record of activity and achievements - the personal brand.

Marshall McLuhan famously wrote in 1964 that: “The medium is the message”, recognising how new technologies impact our social and professional lives. The technology available today, from internet-enabled personal blogging to social networks such as Linkedin, enables the individual to provide the message personally and truly gives rise to the individual as the medium. This is a seismic shift in the flow of communication and information.

A controlled hierarchy has been replaced by a multi-nodal, interconnected network where each one of us control what we send, receive and participate in. The internet works this model efficiently and cost-effectively. The commercial world is now realising the shift in consumer attention with exponential growth in online advertising and marketing. We have always liked connecting, sharing and creating with others, but we now have the tools to do so easily. Television, news and print media are struggling to redefine their roles in the aftermath.

Education and training will follow this shift, as individuals realise they can consciously control their own learning and development. Crucially it doesn't have to look and feel like the classroom and lecture halls of old – although this remains a revelation to most adult learners.

Your personal brand - or in other words your social capital - could be described as a product of your academic, professional and life achievements and your network of contacts. Online media tools such as social networks (for example, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Xing) and content sharing (blogs, wikis, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter again) make it easy for individuals to control their own personal learning and sphere of influence.

This social capital cuts right across normal organisational boundaries and structures. The speed with which contacts can be made and expertise shared renders many traditional learning experiences achingly slow by comparison and frustratingly one-dimensional. It is this movement which has significant implications for the design of CPD support.

Impact of informal learning on CPD

Jay Cross, an active proponent of informal learning in the USA recently commented:

"As networks continue to subvert hierarchy, successful organizations will embrace respect for the individual, flexibility and adaptation, openness and transparency, sharing and collaboration, honesty and authenticity, and immediacy. Training is obsolete because it deals with a past that won’t be repeated. Learning will be redefined as problem-solving, achieving fit with one’s environment and having the connections to deal with novel situations."

Disappointingly, this world-view has yet to establish itself in any widespread reality. Much workplace learning is primarily formal in its delivery, using methods that at best make cursory use of the technology available to support and nurture a more effective and lasting learning experience.

Slowly, this is changing. Various market research surveys and studies in the past 6-12 months reveal a transformation towards a more blended learning experience. There is also an increasing use of e-learning and online collaborative exercises amongst geographically distributed groups of peers and mentors.

Brightwave's E-learning Trends Survey 2009 demonstrated this transformation by polling learning and development specialists within large UK organisations (5,000 plus employees). The survey revealed that while 80 per cent of total training budgets are likely to be cut or stay the same, half of the organisations are expecting their e-learning spend to rise.

This shift is being driven by the learners themselves, rather than HR it seems. An independent study commissioned earlier this year by the training provider, Cegos found that: "Half of employees across Europe want more e-learning and blended learning during the next three years, while only about 40 per cent of HR professionals plan to develop more programmes using these techniques.

“Learners are also keener to embrace collaborative tools like blogs, forums and wikis – 44 per cent of employees want to see these techniques developed, compared to just 32 per cent of HR professionals. Face-to-face learning is more popular among HR, with 42 per cent of respondents wanting to see more classroom learning compared to 38 per cent of employees."

With time and cost pressures growing, there is a real appetite for more flexible forms of learning. The same study found that over 80 per cent of employees were pleased with their e-learning and blending learning experiences. Employees were even calling for more work-based scenarios, self-assessment and tutor/peer support, rather than a return to traditionally exclusive classroom formats. This implies that HR professionals need to understand how to leverage technology to avoid being completely bypassed in the future, as predicted by Cross.

CPD in real time - Ubiquitous Performance Support

With the advent of real time, anywhere access to learning opportunities, it is now possible to offer what might be termed Ubiquitous Performance Support (UPS). Using a flexible, integrated set of tools that centre on your internet connected mobile phone, you can instantly query your professional and personal network of contacts to provide advice and guidance at the point and time of need.

At the same time, you can access your own personalised repository of knowledge, learning tutorials and other relevant content. The outcomes of how you perform in each situation can thus be recorded and self (and peer) assessed to help you improve your performance the next time you find yourself in a similar situation.

Just think of the power this environment has to support individual learning and performance. Instead of the inherently "just in case" model of CPD, which is subject to problems of updates and relevancy, UPS offers a "just in time" model that delivers actionable learning and accelerates the acquisition of practical experience. E-learning is crucial in underpinning this whole process from pre-induction (getting new starters up-to-speed) to ongoing performance support.

This thinking also extends the concept of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). Using Wikipedia (the reference resource of choice for the digital learner), PLEs are defined as:

"Systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to:

• set their own learning goals
• manage their learning; managing both content and process
• communicate with others in the process of learning

and thereby achieve learning goals."

Continuous Professional Development will need to find ways to accommodate this model of learning, providing a higher degree of flexibility and adaptability than ever before. This is more than likely to create some tensions. As the learning experience becomes more bespoke, it will increasingly challenge the concept of standards and levels of competency that are often used for comparison and assessment purposes.

Going further, how do you measure and certify completion? A common measure is contact time or hours learning. When using online tools, environments and peer networks, the learning becomes interwoven with normal daily activity - making it harder to quantify than attending a half-day course. Interestingly, the interwoven nature of the interaction is more effective in transferring the new learning experience into real performance improvement on the job.

Professional associations managing CPD credit schemes will need to work out viable and meaningful ways of measuring this learning activity when their target audience drifts away from more traditional learning. The International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET - www.iacet.org) is the caretaker of the CEU - Continuing Education Unit.

The IACET define the CEU as ten contact hours of participation in an organized continuing education experience under responsible sponsorship, capable direction, and qualified instruction. IACET CEUs may be: "Awarded by a college, association, company or any other organization willing and able to meet each of the ANSI/IACET 1-2007 Standard. Awarding IACET CEUs requires that a permanent record be established for each individual to whom IACET CEUs are awarded, and a transcript of that record must be made available upon request."

When learning activity is interwoven with other activities, how does this get meaningfully calculated? This is no doubt an interesting challenge, especially where learner activity records are spread out over many sites, services and personal interactions.

As I write this there is a significant amount of online discussion about the vagaries of measurement, including comments from the popular bloggers Tony Karrer and Harold Jarche. A serendipitous "Tweet" through Twitter pointed me to an amusing anecdote from Gloria Gery (http://www.gloriagery.com/articles/whydont). Gloria is a pioneer in the field of performance support systems and seeks real measures for learning effectiveness, she says:

“At a meeting one day, I suggested a new measurement criterion.

‘Why don't we weigh the students and report on a cost per pound?’

A deep quiet overcame the meeting. It was finally broken by a softly spoken question.

‘What?’

I guess I was being given a chance to reconsider, but I didn't take it.

‘Why don't we install a scale in the entry way,’ I said, ‘like the one they use for cattle. We can have each student stand on the scale before entering class each day. We can then calculate the return on our investment by volume.’

Needless to say, this attitude was a subject for much discussion both on that day and on my annual appraisal. While I wasn't exactly serious, the idea didn't seem any more irrelevant than some of the success indicators I was reporting on monthly.

None of the measurements I was supposed to take asked if anyone learned anything or if our interventions changed their performance.”

Measures that matter

As Gery rightly points out, traditional training measures (including hours spent "learning") demonstrate the separated nature of much training activity, which is divorced from the actual work context. Measures that matter - reducing errors, increasing productivity, reducing costs, increasing revenues are actually easier to track when learning is woven into the workplace environment.

CPD in its current form does contribute meaningfully towards this goal, but we really need to go further. We need to inject similar real time support across the board, just like my example above.

Looking forward

In lean times there is a tendency for organisations to cut back on overall training spend – although this short-term measure can in fact cause more long-term damage as it means you won’t be in good shape for the inevitable economic upturn and you risk losing the best talent.

In fact, there is an increasing importance of CPD during a recession, as re-skilling becomes more important for professional development with staff taking on new responsibilities if head count is cut. Furthermore, those that do take responsibility for their CPD are likely to be less impacted by the recession, and will come out with more skills.

Simply cutting training budgets is a mistake, because without effective investment in people and performance support when the economy picks up, opportunities will be missed. Indeed, many newly redundant people will discover that they can work productively in new ways outside the corporate structures they have left behind - and they may not return.

Instead of cutting budgets, organisations should instead focus their training attention on the business critical activities of the organisation. Thankfully, a new CiPD survey shows that despite the recession, 70 per cent of the HR community feels training will remain a high priority and CPD remains top of the agenda.

Social capital will inevitably grow in importance and the increased control we demand over our use of media - whether it be on-demand television or interactive shopping - will drive a wider thirst to be in control of our own learning and development. E-learning will continue to offer the most flexible learning opportunities and with mobile broadband internet access becoming more practical, my vision of ubiquitous performance support should become a reality for us all, not just the early adopters.

Debating the future of e-learning (video)

I recently took part in a video debate for the British Computer Society (BCS) which discusses the future of e-learning. Good opportunity to discuss some key issues with Clive Shepherd, Chair of the e-Learning Network; Samantha Kinstrey, MD of 2e2 Training; Laura Overton, MD of Towards Maturity; and Jooli Atkins of Matrix FortyTwo and Chair of the BCS Information and Technology Training Specialist Group.

There was a general agreement that e-learning usage would continue to rise, that blended learning would ultimately replace isolated face to face delivery, not least for capturing the event itself and providing simple pre-session preparation and post session reinforcement.

I brought to the table my beliefs that e-learning has really only got started, that the quality of the learning experience is paramount over the medium of delivery and that we are beginning to see growing confidence in those being subjected to "training" that they can take ownership and control over their learning experience - which is invariably going to involve learning technology in all its forms. I also brought up my views on Less Learning, More Often.

Here's the video. Let me know what you think of the views expressed.

Digital Learning for Digital Britain

Below is an opinion piece I wrote for Training Journal back last month which is published today. Would welcome your own comments on the Digital Britain report and what it means for us in the learning field.

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Should the UK be aiming higher?

The Digital Britain interim report published in January 2009 attempts to lay out an agenda for driving forward the UK's Digital Economy through investment in a high-speed network infrastructure and policy to build nationwide competitive advantage.
It's an ambitious plan but reactions to date report it does not go far enough. By setting a base level of 2Mb/s broadband Internet access speeds many believe that this will continue to leave us woefully trailing other countries. Japan and South Korea are often cited as leading the field with near universal availability of between 50-100Mb/s download speeds. Indeed, this is what they have now. South Korea is already planning 1 Gigabit networks (1000 Mb/s).
Let's also not forget that China has announced plans for a nationwide 100 Mb/s network. These speeds enable real time collaboration, high definition video conferencing and the use of highly sophisticated applications that run purely online. Put in this context, Britain's ambitions may be limited from the outset.

Universal access has the power to transform learning

That said it is laudable that the report starts to tackle how an improved network infrastructure can impact education and skills. This is primarily targeted at ensuring we provide our population, at all levels, with Digital Life Skills (needed by all), Digital Work Skills (needed by most of us) and Digital Economy Skills (needed by an increasing minority) to operate effectively in a knowledge economy.

More than 22 million people in the UK use computers for tasks of varying complexity. More than 2 million work directly in creating, providing, and supporting the hardware, software and digital content that underpin the online services we increasingly rely on.
More importantly perhaps is the imminent transformation of our mobile phones which we ALL carry in our pockets. These devices are fast becoming Internet access gateways, which will impact more profoundly on how we communicate, collaborate and learn in the future.
With 20 per cent of consumers already "cutting the wire" and dropping use of fixed line telephony, mobile network access is a critical area for investment. Here the report alludes to next generation broadband mobile networks offering up to 100Mb/s speeds. It may, therefore, be more prudent to focus hard-to-find public funding on accelerating universal mobile access rather than arguing over the "last mile" for fixed networks.

Digital Learning for life and work skills

However, infrastructure is nothing without smarter methods of application. This is where the education and skills sectors need to look more fundamentally at the way in which we teach children and train adults. It would be a huge mistake to simply replicate current "offline" models, as has been attempted in the past and with very limited success.

Digital Learning or e-learning methods demand a rethink in terms of instructional approaches. Digital Learning enables more fluid, more experiential, more interactive and more collaborative learning. It's more about supporting the learner than the teacher/trainer. Digital learning is also more performance focused and less about artificial testing and assessment.
Digital and e-learning is a constantly evolving field, but should be brought centre stage with appropriate funding to accelerate practical research and effective use. For example, Sector Skills Councils, have yet to put Digital Learning at the heart of their offer. Were they to do so, employers and employees alike would have a relevant and contextualised environment in which to utilise and develop digital life and work skills.

Appetite for Digital: training needs to catch up

Currently, there is still too much traditional training being delivered in ineffective ways with little practical impact in the workplace. Education is also struggling to harness the benefits of Digital Learning. We are still largely operating within the four walls of the classroom and not looking outside the box towards distributive learning models that a networked society offers. The disconnect between the social use of technology, through network and resources such as Facebook and Wikipedia, and a typical formal school or corporate training experience is growing rather than shrinking.
As learners become increasingly empowered through access to the wealth of interactive and collaborative resources available to them on the Internet, then further pressure will be applied for our institutions to rethink their own offer.

Up, up and away: E-learning in the travel sector

Here’s a thought piece covering the use and value of e-learning in the travel sector – this one made the cover story of e.learning age magazine. Again, would welcome your comments.

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Harnessing technology to build trust and improve customer care remains a priority for the travel sector.

There is no doubt that the travel industry is in a state a flux. As the recession gets worse, redundancies continue to plague the sector, with 5,000 reported since autumn 2008 from recognised names such as Hertz and Delta Air Lines. British Airways has also announced a pay freeze.

In these circumstances, trust has become a major issue for the sector, particularly in the wake of collapsing firms such as XL Leisure. ABTA has since appointed a PR consultancy to address the issue and help restore consumer confidence in booking a holiday. With the pound down, people are also staying closer to home and foregoing extras, such as car hire and flight upgrades.

To add further woes, travel firms must digest an unenviable cocktail of challenges, including changing energy prices, eco-tourism, sustainability, online booking and financial modelling, as well as a high staff turnover, which is double that of other industries.

On a brighter note, Travel Weekly recently reported that holidaymakers plan to spend the same in 2009 as 2008, with companies such as Hays Travel actively recruiting and EasyJet announcing a fourth quarter 2008 profit increase.

So, what is the likely impact on training? The challenges faced by the travel sector clearly demonstrate a need for ongoing training. And to survive the recession, travel firms must focus training on customer service skills to help rebuild trust and generate a long-lasting competitive edge. Changing needs of travel customers also bring different knowledge demands and, as learning and development professionals, we need to keep up. Sustainable destinations and offsetting carbon footprints were key desires in previous years, but these are now being replaced by cost as the priority.

Henrietta Palmer, e-learning manager at TUI UK and Ireland, confirms this trend, saying: "Aside from vital compliance and product knowledge training, other requirements can be incredibly reactive. It's all about one thing and as soon as something happens, another completely different skill need becomes the priority. As learning professionals we need to think smart and have a portfolio of learning objects, a library of modules and tools to use and repurpose as needed."

Delivering business benefits

As an industry, travel has a highly evolved learning culture, with nearly one in five more people in the sector, compared to all businesses, receiving training and ongoing development last year, according to People 1st and the ABTA Travel Industry Training and Development Benchmark Survey 2008. Crucially, the same report demonstrated clear business benefits from training, including increased customer satisfaction reported by 96% of survey participants, increased profits (88%), a rise in productivity (83%) and a gain in sales (84%).

While the economic climate brings uncertainty, it is heartening to hear that the majority in travel do not plan to reduce training budgets and half of them expect a slight increase over the next five years. This is different to other sectors, which plan to cut or freeze training budgets in 2009, according to research recently conducted by Brightwave. The research also found that, despite the overall reduction, half of those questioned expect e-learning spend to rise in 2009, qualifying the increase in demand we are seeing for effective online solutions.

As training and ongoing learning are crucial to the travel sector and with large volumes of people involved in the industry, e-learning was introduced in its infancy by some of the larger agencies, hotel chains and air operators. E-learning meets a large number of travel training needs as it is efficient, persistent, consistent, accessible and engaging. It can also help bring large numbers of new recruits up to speed through effective induction and ensure high levels of compliance are met. Further, it improves customer service, builds product knowledge, fulfils multiple language requirements and provides on the job support.

Another reason for the early popularity of e-learning in travel is that it enables new training opportunities, such as critical job simulations targeting cabin crew and virtual scenarios for customer care and sales. We expect e-learning to gain greater popularity as it delivers more cost reductions, faster delivery, higher levels of learner engagement and more opportunities to train people where and when it suits them - crucial for time-shift work.

The future is bite sized

For the travel sector to continue exploiting e-learning in future, it needs to continue viewing technology enabled learning as an investment and not a cost as the rewards and return on investment are huge. There is a great opportunity for learning innovation using new tools and models of working. Travel companies should also take a more flexible approach to e-learning dependant on their goals, learners and risk.

As we move away from traditional and often unnecessarily lengthy courseware, learning progresses towards more digestible and memorable learning bites, or knowledge chunks, which are more engaging. These can be delivered via podcasts, video on demand, social learning, computer simulations or games to help change behaviour and improve performance. Learners simply select the format that suits their need from a collaborative learning portal designed with performance support in mind.

Wendy Stubbs at British Airways supports this view: "Bite sized knowledge chunks will change the way that we do mandatory short sharp courses. If there's a new piece of compliance, let's validate first then get learners to take the course. This frees us up to spend the budget on important stuff that is business critical."

Social networking

E-learning is helping to generate more effective informal learning as it blends formal online training with social networking and knowledge transfer. With generation Y so well represented in the travel sector, informal or social learning is likely to take hold much faster than in other industries. Companies have a lot to gain by connecting people so that valuable knowledge and best practice can spread faster.

At Brightwave, we are seeing travel firms exploring the potential of social learning ahead of other sectors and expect this to grow as technology costs come down and new models are created. A wiki devoted to destinations or the handling of difficult customer scenarios could help share knowledge and best practice live. Imagine this, supported by a portfolio of learning bites and communication pieces, and you have a powerful learning resource. As part of this mix, mobile learning, intuitively aligned to a dispersed travel workforce is poised to give true access to location-based services and bite sized learning.

British Airways is piloting BABlend.net, a professional networking tool that enables employees to learn from each other. It is popular with staff and has already identified what works best. For example, first screens and tags are vital to early engagement.

Travel companies that increase their commitment to training during the recession will be in a good position to prosper once the economy picks up. With customer service so fundamental to success, a 96% increase in customer satisfaction from ongoing learning and development can be ignored only at companies' commercial peril.

Looking ahead, Palmer at TUI, says: "We will all be looking to maximise budgets, repurpose resources, maximise informal opportunities, reduce business travel and exploit technologies to work across distances. Alongside cost reduction and customer care, sustainability is high on the agenda. E-learning is a way we can make an impact."

There is no doubt that technology will increasingly move centre stage to deliver business critical training with increased efficiency. But the shift also catalyses a move to more engaging and timely learning experiences for a sector that, while hit first by the recession, will also lead the recovery into a new economic landscape.

E-induction

Here's an article I've written for publication covering the benefits learning technology offers in bringing new employees up to speed. Your comments are welcome, especially on the ideas around making use of the pre-joining period.

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E-induction: Save time, reduce costs and improve quality with e-learning

While the headlines are dominated by job losses and uncertainty, it's easy to forget that for the vast majority of organisations, there is still business to be won, customers to serve and employees to manage. Indeed some sectors are doing well in the downturn - examples include Sky the satellite TV broadcaster, Aldi the discount supermarket chain and Admiral Insurance - all announcing growth plans.

For large segments of the economy there remains an ongoing requirement to attract, recruit and retain staff. However, there is increased pressure to make this process more efficient and effective. It is more important than ever to ensure that new and existing staff are up to speed and fully productive in as short a time as possible. So how do you save time, reduce costs and improve quality of inductions all at the same time?

Too little, too late

The far too common experience for a new joiner is to be thrown into the deep end, relying on colleagues around them for immediate support. Then, if they are lucky they'll attend an induction training course three to six weeks after their start date. The training at this stage is largely a waste of time and the productivity of those initial weeks will be unnecessarily low, not just for the new starter, but for those colleagues around them.

This approach may not only lead to potential regulatory risks, but there is also a high chance that poor customer service or mistakes on the job could lead to lost business and sales - something no business can afford in the current climate.

Where induction training is provided, it is often delivered in highly compressed classroom formats with little opportunity for staff to fully remember and practice new knowledge and skills in preparation for use in their job role. Not only that, with even more pressure on existing staff, finding the time to provide adequate support to new employees becomes increasingly difficult.

It should come as no surprise then to learn that 90 per cent of employees decide whether to leave their new employer within the first six months (recently voiced by Gretchen Alarcon at Oracle). When staff leave early, all investment made is lost.

The overall costs of induction are therefore unnecessarily high. Measuring time to full productivity of new staff reveals it can take anything between six and twelve months for them to reach the required levels of competence and confidence to deliver at expected performance levels.

In areas where there are naturally high levels of staff turnover, such as contact centres and retail, this can amount to very large sums of money spent on training and re-training without ever truly improving overall performance. The Call Centre Association (CCA) claims a failure to retain employees is costing firms up to £1 billion per year, with employee turnover rates as high as 30 per cent.

E-induction is the answer

Using technology to support the timely delivery of core induction training answers many of the traditional problems described above. A well designed e-learning experience that covers key topic areas - company values, organisational structure, core product knowledge, health and safety for example - can engage and inform employees. And engage them at a time that suits them, all presented in a consistent and persistent manner.

Staff can also review and refer back to the e-learning as required, thus providing immediate remedial support and improving long term recall. New joiners are more self-reliant and do not need to interrupt colleagues for help on the basics. Managers and colleagues are liberated to provide essential coaching and localised support.

Faster completion times and more flexible delivery can also be achieved by introducing e-learning into an existing planned induction programme. For example, we recently worked with Bupa Healthcare on re-designing a five week induction programme to include e-learning on company policy, regulation, IT systems training, and simulated customer service calls.

This programme with Bupa led to an immediate saving of over two days in training time. And even more importantly, new inductees completed the learning experience more confidently and competently leading to a full two weeks saved in coaching and observation prior to being released into their job role. Time to full productivity can be greatly reduced with effective e-learning, all of which saves time and money, as well as improving the quality of the learning experience.

The rise of pre-induction

Some organisations are going further by using learning technology to support the recruitment and pre-joining phases of new starters. Not only can e-learning be used to test and assess applicants, providing a highly efficient filtering mechanism, it can also capitalise on the early enthusiasm and motivation of new starters from the moment they receive their Welcome Letter.

In the weeks running up to their first day, staff can access a secure induction portal via the internet to complete aspects of their induction in their own time ensuring they hit the ground running. By integrating the processes of attraction, selection, pre-joining and induction an organisation can make significant cost savings while also presenting their brand more consistently.

Looking ahead

As working practices become ever more fluid with increasing numbers of contract workers, deep restructuring of established industries (banking and automotive sectors for example) and the increased availability of broadband internet access, it is clear that e-induction should be at the heart of the learning and development experience.

This is the future of real employee engagement as a next generation reared on the internet and digital communication comes into the workforce. Traditional trainers will need to move to a more consultative coach/mentor role rather than delivering standard knowledge heavy classroom sessions. That can only be a good thing for all concerned.

By harnessing technology in this way, very significant cost savings can be made. An increasingly effective and speedy path to full productivity for each new employee means an organisation can be more agile, responsive and deliver better customer service. This is crucial to survival going forward.

Implementing e-induction - top tips to get new recruits up-to-speed faster

To get started, try looking at your current induction practices and explore how you can implement the following:

- Measure the time it takes for a new joiner to be recruited, start and then reach full productivity in their role. Then measure the associated costs, including salary, training costs, potential lost sales etc

- Develop an Introduction/Welcome e-learning module for your organisation. Representing your brand and culture, this can cover your mission, values, organisational structure, products and services. Your employees will have something of quality to engage with immediately they start

- Identify regulatory training and deliver this using e-learning that also tracks and records completion - this will save time and provide a compliance tool for all employees going forward

- Launch a pre-induction portal to support the selection process and also to enable new joiners to complete elements of their induction before Day One.

With these facilities in place, measure the time it now takes for new joiners to reach full productivity. Expect to see significant improvements.

Get Real: Mission Critical E-learning

Here's an article published in Learning Technologies magazine this week. I wrote it some time back (old world printing deadlines) failing to fully forward plan for some events, like Obama moving from Elect to Active president status last week. But I'd welcome your comments on what you think mission critical e-learning means to your organisation or the organisations you work with.

The bits in italics were cut from the published version which you can read here and here - let me know if you think they were right!

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Lars Hyland examines mission critical e-learning and how learning technology is critical to the way we support employees in the workplace.

We can all see that times are changing. The balance of global power is moving east, and industrial age industries are under severe pressure. By the time you read this, Ford, GM or Chrysler (perhaps all three) could well be bankrupt (or clinging on temporarily with a government bailout [UPDATE - we now know its the latter]). Energy prices will continue to yo-yo, and financial credit at the unregulated levels we once took for granted will just be an incredulous memory. All sectors will experience a downturn and that includes the training industry which itself has been in denial for far too long. Like the automotive sector that has largely ignored the increasing scarcity of oil and climate change concerns, and the financial industry that sold us an irrational dream of endless credit for all, the training world has to get real. And that means finally acknowledging the elephant in the room: That most of our training activities are hopelessly inefficient and we have little proof of their effectiveness.

The good news is that we already have many of the answers - we just need to implement them. Learning technology is critical to the way we support employees in the workplace. It is no longer a novelty. Instead it needs to drive talent management/human capital/people strategy towards a more agile model.

So what does this look like? Well it means even if overall training budgets drop in organisations struggling to survive (let alone aiming for growth), a greater proportion needs to be spent on learning technology. If this happens, organisations can build a much more effective and efficient platform for supporting their staff whenever and wherever they need it. Organisations must be agile to remain competitive. Agility also best describes how we need to manage learning technology. Already in use to describe progressive software development and manufacturing strategy, allow me to describe an AGILE organisational learning strategy using that tried and tested chunking method - the mnemonic.

A = Accelerated

We do need to accelerate our ways of working to deliver value more regularly and systematically. That is not the same as buying rapid development tools to bash out ill formed "e-learning" to an audience that will not only be unimpressed but also none the wiser - or more productive. Instead, we need to look at the end to end workflow, from need identification through to post deployment follow through. Communication between stakeholders, subject matter experts, and (the too often forgotten) learners themselves needs to be clear, concise and accurate if a learning intervention is to have maximum and timely impact. At Brightwave we have pioneered development practices which have led to large volumes of targeted, highly interactive learning content being produced in remarkably short timeframes to meet mission critical business change. A major key to success is a tightly collaborative working relationship and smooth communication between all parties.

G = Goal driven

It goes without saying that any organisational learning and development activity should be strongly aligned with its core business strategy and its impact scrutinised. Unfortunately too much training is facile, inappropriate, delivered to the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons - indulgences we can no longer afford. A strategy based on learning technology has inbuilt measurement and assessment checks, both formal (for accreditation and regulation) and informal (peer level rating and feedback). Learning and development staff have to learn to offer solutions that are genuinely supportive of business activity - that means listening carefully and delivering more performance support than traditional training courses.

I = Integrated

To achieve Acceleration you have to join up the typically disconnected functions of Internal Communications, Training and Performance Management. Currently staff are often bombarded with conflicting messages from different departments and so become disoriented and numb. This can actually decrease productivity, rather than improve it. Thinking end to end means adopting "campaign" rather than "course" led programmes designed to effect real changes in attitudes, behaviour and performance. A campaign also suggests repetition is built in - a key aspect to real learning that is often totally missing from one-hit, sheep-dip training courses. It also gives you the opportunity to test and improve your message as you go. Each iteration is an opportunity to get through more successfully. You may think this takes longer than current activities - and you are not wrong. But if your real Goal is to effect real change and improvement, then adopting this approach will get your organisation where it needs to be much faster. To go back to our beleaguered friends in the car industry for a second, think of it as the difference between pressing the accelerator to the floor while in neutral, as opposed to steadily moving forward in third. You can either get nowhere fast, or somewhere and still enjoy the view as you go.

L = Liberating

"When change is discontinuous, the success stories of yesterday have little relevance to the problems of tomorrow; they might even be damaging. The world at every level, has to be reinvented to some extent" Charles Handy, Beyond Certainty, 1996

All bets are off. Handy's words uttered 12 years ago have even more resonance now. We really are experiencing discontinuous change and that means previously accepted methods no longer work and may actually be damaging. This is particularly true in the training and education fields which cling doggedly to outdated and unproven learning theories and accepted practice. These constrained economic times will force us to reconsider everything. To harness what we now know about learning and performance support through developments in cognitive psychology and neuroscience as well as learning technology. That should be seen as truly liberating for us as a profession - a licence to innovate. It means grappling with social networks, simulations, collaborative tools that will stimulate your staff to take responsibility for their own learning and performance. Use these new methods to clear away unnecessary, ineffectual communication that clutters their working lives and provide them with the right tools, aligned messages and clear direction - they will do the rest. While that might feel frightening, there is a wealth of experience already out there that will help you make it work successfully.

E = Engaging

In interesting times, you need interesting solutions. It has never been so hard to get heard in the ocean of information, emails, texts, adverts and other media we all swim through. Any learning intervention must compete with them. What many experience as "e-learning" is oversimplified tutorials that retain too much of the old course legacy and are often rightly perceived as plain dull. Rapid development tools, when in the wrong hands, are in danger of serving the same recipe only as a fast food alternative. This does not make for a better learning experience. The true potential of learning technology is to provide virtual practice that simulates real aspects of every day jobs, tools that connect people to each other so that valuable best practice and news of innovations can spread faster, systems that support you at the time of need. That is what we should collectively know and understand as the definition of e-learning.

So in summary (and this is a necessary repetition to help you remember!) an AGILE strategy delivers accelerated, goal-driven, integrated, liberating, and engaging learning experiences.

As learning and development professionals we are going to need to dig deep and confront those conservative fears and accept that we have finally reached a tipping point that will radically remodel the way we design and deliver learning solutions. Mission critical is not mission impossible. To paraphrase the new President Elect [UPDATE - no longer!]: can we do it? Yes we can.

The Five Minute University

Harold Jarche referenced this delicious video clip of Father Guido Sarduci pointing out what we all know about traditional schooling and higher education - we forget most of it. So what is the net value to us and society in perpetuating a model that is plainly inefficient, especially when the connected world we live in now fundamentally changes the economics on which that model was based.

As I've said before in one of my original posts to this blog: Less Learning, More Often is a conceptual framework that goes someway to address this chasm.

By the way - get to the end of the clip. The legal profession is vastly over engineered and at some point must undergo disruptive change once we remove the archaic language and democratise access to the computer systems and databases that many lawyers rely on anyway. E-learning can play a big role in helping society better understand the laws of the land.