Recruit, Inspire & Retain

Should You Have Fun at Work in Challenging Times? YES, More than Ever!

We’re not talking about “making fun” of low sales, low profits, or laid off workers. We are talking about enjoying yourself at work.

It’ll help you keep the employees.

It’ll help you get higher production.

It’ll help you keep them coming to work instead of calling off.

Profit from Fun
Keep your workplace from becoming “the grind”!, says Men’s Wearhouse CEO Zimmer, “Look, if the employees are happy and make the stores fun, then that will make it fun for the customers”.

Some examples are from November 2003 Time Magazine article Having Fun Yet?

eLearning: The Ideal Set Up vs. the Reality of Real Life

Everyone knows that the way you are supposed to develop an eLearning solution for your organization and the way it really happens are two quite different things! The ideal, of course, is to do some variant of the following:
1. Create an eLearning solution vision
2. Initiate a project charter
3. Conduct a needs assessment
4. Select and budget the eLearning needed
5. Implement the eLearning solution

Can we all agree this just never happens? Instead of trying to trim and massage the model to make it fit, let's toss it away for now in favor of something more realistic. It simply does not faithfully depict the experience a typical learning officer has as they implement eLearning. Instead, let’s look at a more realistic situation and a more strategic way of making the best of what you actually do confront.

Reality: a Collage of Disparate Possibilities
Most learning officers do not begin their foray into eLearning with the ideal approach. Instead, the norm is to "ooze" into eLearning. eLearning begins in your organization very incrementally and people in the organization gravitate to elements of it gradually and by default.

Isn't this close to what you have seen: As a trainer you realize the technology has arrived. You begin to explore what is meant by eLearning and what it might look like. You are also getting signals from others in your organization. Perhaps HR has some compliance documents and they ask you to 'put them online'. Or a supervisor comes by one day and says, "Hey, let's put this PowerPoint on our company Web site, so I won't have to always respond to e-mail requests for it. Can't we call it training and make all the new hires look it over?” And of course, there's that hotshot over in the accounting department, who just got out of college. She's been hanging out with some guy named Arthur Ware and says she already has some eLearning modules up on her part of the network. John, your administrative assistant, has also told you about his experiences with some outfit that offers online training in Microsoft office products. And wow! Some of his latest Excel spreadsheets have been phenomenal. Even the VP's kid visited last week and was saying how his role-play games are teaching him how to set up towns and run railroads and did you learn to run your department on a Nintendo!

What these learning officers have in front of them at the time they recognize a need for an eLearning strategy is a wide variety of experience and ability to use technology and a wide variation in the types of needs and solutions available. And everyone is voicing a different combination of all these things. Indeed you may have already hired a coordinator for eLearning, but found them unable to get an initiative underway successfully. Or maybe you brought a programmer on board to create some eLearning courses, but found that they know nothing about how to help people learn.

KISS
"You don't need a cannon to blow away an outhouse". You may read about the latest and greatest eLearning technology, or a salesperson will pitch the hottest thing on the market. Many, if not most of the learning and knowledge needs out there simply do not require the most sophisticated technology to address them. In fact, trying to push a sophisticated solution where it really isn't needed can be harmful.

I recall attending a session a few years ago at ASTD's Techknowledge '99 Conference. Performance Support Systems are a favorite of mine, so I attended a session related to that subject. The focus was team-based task analysis. The issue came up of process and task standards and how task steps were relayed to machine operators on the factory floor. Of course I had in mind a really cool system of monitors displaying computerized process steps with complimentary training available at the touch of a mouse, etc. The presenter let us know that they had abandoned such a system for plain old binders with sheet protectors. For them the low-tech method worked because it required less maintenance, was easily changed, and did not require that factory personnel be computer literate. Actual learning and training was obtained in team meetings where they would discuss the process steps and tasks to complete them. A sophisticated solution would have been inappropriate and may even have retarded team development.

Need for eLearning
As a rule of thumb, the closer the individual's job is to managing information, the more likely they are to benefit from some form of eLearning. So the IT department & that administrator we talked about are obvious. Add persons engaging in specific service, or information-based processes (e.g., how to file a claim), as well as those who routinely face a specific social or relational situation (supervisors, salespersons) are able to benefit from some of the more advanced forms of eLearning. When deciding who you should start creating eLearning for, ask yourself the hard question of 'how many extra dollars could that person bring in revenue or productivity for every dollar I would spend on an eLearning solution for them?" You will find that the answer may not be as often in the affirmative as you have been led to believe.

Knowledge or Learning?
Never confuse the need for training with the need for knowledge. I am often asked about new product 'training'. Clearly there is a role for eLearning in the dissemination of information about new products and how to use them. Many times, however, people only need answers, not training. So as you gaze down at the 'collage of disparate possibilities' on your desk, distinguish information management issues from those intended to impart deeper understanding and skills.

Solutions
We have only talked about one side of the coin. Literacy and needs are the 'demand' side of the eLearning equation. The other is the 'supply' side. You will have solutions coming at you from two directions. One is the host of materials, documents, and modules already in use in your organization - the PowerPoint slides, word documents and independent attempts to inject eLearning in individual departments. These are either someone else's solutions to training and knowledge problems or suggestions people think you should implement or improve. They can range from product information to phone manuals, from the HR policy manual to the shipping department's top ten list of things not to do if you expect a customer to receive their package.

The second source is represented by the vendors, in whose myriad brochures and URLs you find yourself swimming. The U.S. News and World Report lists over six hundred eLearning vendors (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/elearning). These are just those registered with the magazine and do not include a number of smaller 'boutique' firms and independent instructional designers. Most of the vendors’ products are of the generic kind. Many of these focus on how to use the technology. eLearning products explaining how to use Microsoft Word or other applications are almost a dime-a-dozen these days. Almost any electronics or office supply store carries inexpensive training CDs covering most of the standard software packages. The equivalent is available from most major suppliers of online training. They usually establish for you a company account and administrative tools if you sign on with them. Their product offerings are becoming increasingly sophisticated, as well.

A second tier of products has emerged which slightly customize generic content. This is occurring mostly in the business skills areas. Leadership, project management, coaching and supervising, and other generic content focusing on "soft skills", have been around the training industry for some time. There are literally mountains of instructor-led training materials available on these subjects. Much of this is being turned into eLearning. That allows organizations to work with the content so that it matches their particular approach and culture.

The third type is training custom developed for a particular client. In contrast to the $9.99 CDs at your local electronics store, these often go for between $500 and $1,000 per learner minute, excluding the LMS infrastructures in which to place them.

What this supply breakdown means is that when you are thinking about finding eLearning solutions for the persons most likely to need and use them, you will be drawing solutions from a pool of highly generic, but less expensive to highly customized and more expensive products. Clearly the most absurd way to solve your eLearning dilemma would be to go out and purchase top-of-the-line custom ware for those with little need or ability to use it (i.e., those in the bottom right quadrant of the table above). This is not to say it has not happened however! Most of us, at least with the aid of the strategic tips in this article, can avoid this obvious misstep. So our next move is to apply good strategic principles to getting the right thing to the right people at the right price.

Your Next Step
First, do not rush out and make the 'mistakes of extremes'. There are a couple of these and you should try to avoid them.

Don't ...
1. Hire an in-house eLearning designer. One extreme is to leap into the middle of the lake and think you'll be able to build the Queen Mary while treading water.

Hiring an in-house eLearning designer is a symptom of this reaction. True, if this were an instructor-led piece of training, you might go out and hire a trainer to develop and deliver instruction in some subject. The trainer would come in and design the course and do the training. Ergo the same must be true for eLearning.

But that is not the ball game we are in here. The whole point of eLearning is to deliver courses without a live human for every twenty or so attendees. Looking at eLearning staffing as if it were just another training position misses the idea entirely. Besides, that single individual might be put toiling away on a wheel already invented by someone else, and could never get around to developing and managing all your eLearning courseware. In fact it takes about three or four times (some say more) as much time to develop an eLearning course as it does a typical classroom offering.

2. Hire a vendor for everything. At the other extreme is the reaction of tossing up your hands, hiring a vendor for all your eLearning and turning loose of the steering wheel. There are numerous problems with this approach. First, you will need to explore the offerings of lot of vendors. And also consider that many of these will offer only online services. Your staff, however, will want to take these courses at home or on the road, where bandwidth issues become important.

With the many choices available out there these days, putting all your eggs in one basket just is not strategically astute.

Start Your eLearning With
the staff who have high computer literacy and a true need for immediate learning— not knowledge only
simple interaction that doesn’t eat up all your bandwidth
a vendor partner (if needed) who’s part of your team—not the team

Adapted from an article by Randall Kindley @ HR.com.