Paul McKey, Managing Director, Senior Consultant, Redbean Learning Solutions , Brisbane, Australia. paul.mckey@redbean.com.au
Organisations which are geographically dispersed face greater challenges than most. The simplest tasks of both communication and information sharing which a centralised organisation takes for granted can become enormous barriers to change and development for those spread across the country or internationally.
The use of Interactive Learning Techniques as both an alternative and support for learning events is a powerful cost-effective tool. It can greatly reduce the costs, enhance the quality and learning retention of these events as well as form the basis for a new information and knowledge sharing ethos in a dispersed organisation.
It is commonly accepted that organisational change is continuously occurring at many levels within any organisation, both explicitly, through learning initiatives and changing work practices, and implicitly, through socialisation and culture. However when the departments, branches or individuals are scattered there is no way to implement smoothly or measure the rate of this change across the realms. The organisation can quickly become out of sync.
To alleviate this dispersed organisations need to regularly bring people together
either in small groups or a company wide learning event to re-sync and align
values, vision and methods etc. It is an expensive and hit and miss affair.
Consider a company with a number of different departments and branches spread
across various capital city and regional centres. To ensure consistency both
in work practices and customer relations and perhaps to re-sync the vision it
has been decided to bring everyone together for three days for a series of organised
workshops and social events designed to align the company. The secondary benefits
of the meeting will be those of socialisation, comradre and renewed vigour and
reinforcement of company culture.
The big weekend finally comes and staff fly in from all over the country to a centrally located resort for three days of work and play. The CEO is on hand, goals are set and everyone gets a say. A successful program the company has now repeated for three years. Finally everybody says their goodbyes and begin the journey home and back to the ‘real’ world.
Unfortunately the retention, goodwill and commitment to change generated by the learning event is in decline from the very day after it finishes. Within a week most of the emotion will have faded. Within a month only some key messages will remain but possibly not the reasons for their importance. Within 3 months most people who collaborated, solved problems and created new models together will probably not have spoken since the event and hence won’t speak again until the next event. The result? Most of the value (and cost) of the learning event has been eroded to dust.
And there’s the problem. How does the organisation not only sustain but actually increase the impetus to change and improvement which the physical learning event has set in train? How does it avoid annual cycles of learning, unlearning and re-learning which cost a small fortune? How does it implement a corporate communications strategy that will not end up as just more junk mail?
This is where online and interactive learning techniques come to the fore. Most call it eLearning for short and while the use of information and communications technology to teach and stay in touch is not new, it is now a lot easier, far more cost effective and we have a much better idea of what does and doesn’t work.
Simple eLearning techniques can be used to provide support to existing training
and meetings or used for widespread distribution of new initiatives in the such
areas as sales training, changed work practices or compliance requirements etc.
Using a combination of email, web and desktop applications new knowledge and
skills can be quickly made available to all in the organisation. Even manual
workers should be given easy and regular access to the company’s ‘knowledge’.
One very practical use of online technologies is to use them before, during
and after a learning event to increase their effectiveness and improve the Return
on Investment (ROI). This is achieved in several ways:
The flow for any learning event whether the annual conference or a one off training class and workshop can use this model to substantially increase its chances of success and retention of event objectives. Below is a sample design:
| Step | Timing | Comments |
| 1. Begin marketing to the target audience | 4 weeks prior | Begin to ‘sell’ the event as early as possible to ensure buy-in from participants |
| 2. Distribute learning materials | 2 weeks prior | Allow time for the participants to be able to read and discuss the relevant materials |
| 3. Administer the event | ongoing | Use the web to handle all administrative tasks, registrations, travel etc. |
| THE EVENT | The event | Participants arrive primed and prepared for the event. Use technology to support the event. |
| 1. Follow up plan starts | 1 week after | Send list of attendees with contact info to all participants |
| 2. Invite attendees to join a discussion group | 2 weeks after | Distribute key findings, actions or follow up activities to group(s) |
3. Continue to develop and add to the community |
ongoing | Track and support the community to develop purpose and camaraderie |
The benefits of this form of integrated event and its associated knowledge support will spill over in to other areas of the organisation where the responsibility to seek out and understand the changing nature of the work becomes an every day proactive task of the individual instead of an occasional, and probably reactive, training responsibility of the organisation.
To measure the true ROI of online learning requires a dual perspective of not only cost savings but also the advantages. Typically most cost-savings associated with moving some or all of your learning events online, such as travel, etc. don’t persist past the first year. Secondly you must also consider the value gained. This is much harder yet must be attempted as it provides the real reason for any learning event, to add value, improve performance and increase profitability. Cost savings alone are not enough. Hence you must have a set of HR and finance metrics, both soft and hard, which allow you to compare the ‘today’ state against the ‘tomorrow’ state.
Finally success in eLearning and the integration of knowledge management into the organisation will rarely be achieved by buying one type of technology or software application. It requires a combination of technologies, organisational initiatives and support (business needs), good interactive learning techniques (purpose) and quality people designing the programs. Yet for those doing it correctly the benefits and the direct links between knowledge sharing and profitability in many industry sectors are becoming well established.
Online learning as both an alternative and support for learning events is a
powerful cost-effective tool. It can greatly reduce the costs, enhance the quality
and learning retention of these events as well as form the basis for a new information
and knowledge sharing ethos in a dispersed organisation.
While the ROI of such an investment is usually focussed on the cost-savings
these will diminish fairly quickly. True ROI is gained from an integrated approach
with the tangible and intangible gains in knowledge, skills, and other factors
contributing to profitability and a healthy balance sheet.