Like many new initiative, starting a successful e-Learning program for your company requires adoption from both those who will eventually be affected by the rollout (employees, customers and partners) and from the top (senior management).
These are the key stakeholders and the one’s that will be affected by your e-Learning program. What will they gain? What might they lose? How do you include them in the process early and make them feel involved and excited along the way? How do you make sure they understand and buy into the purpose of the program?
The kiss of death is to create your program in a vacuum and surprise those who will be affected with a finished product.
In the early stages of program development, show stakeholders prototypes or ideas you have that might be beneficial to them or their team. This can be a starting point to a good brainstorming session where stakeholders input valuable ideas of their own.
If they can see what is possible, if they can see how it might benefit their department or them personally, and if they are involved in shaping the program from the start, they are more likely to become project champions, or at least project supporters. The alternative is indifference or, in a worst-case scenario, resistance.
So show them sample simulations, games, lessons, quizzes, etc. Demonstrate how these can be applied to their department or team.
Ask what topics they think should be included in lessons, what skills they think should be tested, whether they would volunteer to be filmed for 5 minutes on a topic they know well that might benefit their team members.
For example, if the head of sales acknowledges that she has to repeat herself frequently to bring new team members up to speed, sell her on a half hour investment in creating a 5 minute Web-based instructional video to save her and her team time in the long run.
Senior management has to lend frequent vocal support as well. A CEO showing commitment to the project can help make it a success.
Have him outline why he supports it, and what he hopes to achieve by rolling it out. Or have him invite employees to participate in the development process, maybe even creating a small task force and asking for volunteers. Those who are interested will self-select.
Purpose
What led to the decision to develop your e-Learning program? Does your company want to reduce training costs? Do you want to increase revenue through more skilled and knowledgeable sales reps and resellers? Do new industry regulations require employee certification? Are you rolling out a new product that requires employee and customer training?
Clearly defining the purpose is important for two reasons. First, an initiative that adds tasks to an already busy day is work so stakeholders need to understand why you are burdening them with additional tasks. Second, it assures that whoever is developing the program maps what they create to the defined objectives.
Development
Now that you’ve completed your data gathering, interviewing, and defined your business requirements, you’re ready to develop your program.
The important strategy here is to choose learning activities that will help achieve your goals. For example, you are head of training for a call center company. You have high turnover, the people you train are generally new employees that have, as a generality, less drive and ambition, less education, than the person running the department. What activities are most appropriate for training this type of person?
Clearly, you wouldn’t start with a 50 question test at the highest difficulty level, a complex simulation that forces them to stretch, that frustrates them, etc. You want to ease them into it, make it fun, maybe with some role play games or simulations. Bring their guard down, not up.
Contrast this to training for senior managers. To them, there is not enough time in a day to finish all the tasks on their plate. You better not waste their time. A fun game that has some educational value but is, for the most part, more of a game, will be a waste of their time. They want to be challenged, tested, and encouraged. They want to walk away smarter than when they started. Activities that require them to problem solve, think critically, or think differently will find a receptive audience.
Think about the culture in a gym. The guys with the biggest bodies who push themselves, the type A personalities, will always strive to get bigger, better, faster. They want all the nutritional supplements, they watch what they eat, they do one more rep even though their body tells them that it is done.
An ambitious employee is the same. They want to make their brain big and, well, brainy. A light workout will not get them there. Contrast this to the social gym rat. A challenging workout is not what they are looking for. Clearly, you, as the trainer want to improve their body, their fitness, their health.
But putting 500 pounds on a bar and forcing them to lift it will not get them there. It will have negative consequences. So how do you coax them, make them fit without them feeling like it was a chore? The ability to work with this type of personality is what makes a great trainer.
Knowing your audience is important. It helps you choose which types of activities you may use in your program. And to fully understand what works, start with a small prototype / pilot. Perhaps one module containing a lesson or two. Get feedback from your audience. This feedback loop will help you as you continue to develop your program, to make modifications to the structure of your program, to choose which activities and content you use in your program, etc.
Now that you’re developing your program in full, briefly reflect on the purpose again (save money / cut costs, develop new skills, rollout a new product, change corporate direction) and incorporate the feedback you have received from key stakeholders. Once completed, release the full program to your team. The final step is feedback on the full working program, which allows you to fine-tune the program to meet the needs of your stakeholders.
Measuring Results
When you decided to pursue an e-Learning program you had a purpose for doing so.
What results are you looking for by implementing your e-Learning program? Examples include increased revenue, cost reduction, new employee behavior, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.
Desired improvements should be compared to a baseline. It is important, before implementing a program, to determine what the baseline is. Have you sent out a customer or employee survey to gauge current levels of satisfaction, do you know what current revenues are per sales rep, have you determined current employee behaviors that are undermining your business? It is also important to develop metrics to measure results against the baseline.
Having a baseline to measure against is important. A baseline helps show stakeholders concrete results. Every investment needs to show a return on investment. Investments in training are no different than investments in new product development.
