How you can make learning work when you include all stakeholders in the decision-making and planning stages of the process.
Making eLearning work by including all stakeholders
I just wanted to give you an idea of the type of work I do with clients and how eLearning can change the path of a company and their employees by taking the time to involve all of the stakeholders including the employees themselves.
In a recent project, I undertook for a large furniture company I was asked to evaluate their training and how it was rolled out to employees. Also to evaluate the return on expectation(ROE) for the major stakeholders on the executive management team. As it stood they felt that they were not getting results from their sales staff after the training had been rolled out and in some cases, the great salespeople in their stores seem to slip backwards after the training.
The approach I used was to spend time in a single store and receive the training that the employees would receive. After this, I attended the mandatory three full days of training in the training centre. The results I found were astounding in the fact that after the training I found I was confused and frustrated as did the employees after they had taken the training.
The Big Problem:
The main problem in the company was that the executive management team decided what training would be given and also what external training would be provided. This fell flat on its face because they never consulted the management or employees in each branch to arrive at a training plan that would be suitable for everyone across the business.
These are the major problems that arose in the old system:
- Employees were being trained by managers that had little or no training in sales, coaching, mentoring or train the trainer.
- The three-day training was a combination of 90% watching PowerPoint slides and 10% of actual product handling. As you can imagine this would be three days of torture for the employees and with little or no retention of the content delivered.
- The training given between the managers and the trainer conflicted with each other, leading the staff to be totally confused and frustrated.
- There was no assessment after either the management training or the three-day training event.
The Management & External Trainer
After sitting down with the management and the external trainers I discovered a number of reasons that the training was not working. The reason given by the trainer on the three-day course claimed that the management was giving incorrect information to all employees. And when I asked the management team I discovered that they felt that the external trainer was not experienced enough to deliver training on the furniture products as they mostly worked with companies in the fashion and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sectors.
Issues lay around the number of product changes and the time allotted for training in the store, which usually happened on a Saturday or Sunday as on these days all staff were on duty. However, that lead to a quick fifteen-minute update of the new products and little else.
The Employees
When speaking to the employees they saw the problem with the external trainers in that they spoke in a language that was way above the employee’s understanding and that management spent very little time in the actual in-store training. This lead employees to conflict with the information given and to a multitude f problems when ordering furniture for customers, especially when it came to ordering products that had size, colour or left or right orientation.
After my experience of my training with the company and from the viewpoint of all three (managers, employee and external trainer) I proposed a solution to the executive management team that would increase engagement by management and employees. as follows:
Flip the Training Upsidedown
In order to flip the training upsidedown, they needed a clear path as to how the training would be completed. Costs were the big stumbling block, as it would not be possible to role out the training instore to every employee and maintain customer service and store standards. In the end, the solution proposed was as follows:
Management Team to deliver:
- New Starter Inductions
- Company History & Culture
- Monthly and Quartley Evaluations
- Sit on the Training Committee
Reduce the three-day course to a one-day course which covered:
- Manual Handling
- Fire Safety
- Health & Safety Compliance
- 5 Star Customer Service
- Systems & Process
Introduce eLearning to the business as follows:
- Develope eLearn training system including an LMS.
- Train the manages as” Train The Trainer” to ensure they can roll out and evaluate the performance of employees.
- Each salesperson has their own email and iPad (this is a standard in place pre-evaluation) This device can be used to deliver a unique eLearning experience to each employee regardless of which department they work in.
- Create modules/courses for various compliance, self-development and technical knowledge required.
- Include evaluation knowledge check and quizzes for all employees
Employee Responsibility for Own Development:
- Complete mandatory compliance training within the first week.
- Manage their own learning through eLearning on their iPad.
- Complete the validation modules on the LMS.
- Be rewarded for achieving each level from Beginner to Expert.
- Sit on the Training Committee.
Cost Saving Training:
As the company already owned a full media studio for the product video and photo shoots, it would be wise to use this to create the training for every furniture product that was stocked by the company. This made sense as they would already photograph the product, write up all of the specs and video it for use in commercials and in-store advertising. It would be easy to have one of the professionals create a short three-minute video and pdf datasheet that could be combined and used instore by the employees to train on all of the products in the furniture department. This would eliminate the need for training within the store by the management team. This would save costs as the video would be made once and uploaded to the company intranet and then available immediately for the employees to use in over 20 branches.
To enable the employees to complete the learning at their own pace and at any time of the day I created QR codes for each product and these would be available on each of the products in-store and then linked this to the company intranet and LMS. Employees only need to scan the QR code to access the training and or datasheet. All products can be accessed online within the LMS as well.
Proposal Accepted and Fast Forward Twelve Months:
Moving on twelve months the project is complete and the results are fantastic and meeting the executive teams return on expectations (ROE). The training now comprises the following:
- The management team complete the standard new starter inductions.
- The external trainer makes a one day workshop to teach, compliance sales and processes.
- The employees validate all internal and external training on the company LMS.
The major change in the process is that each employee can now access training for all furniture products from their iPad all videos are limited to three minutes, and each video is accompanied by a data sheet. To access either data sheer or video training the employee just has to scan a QR code on their iPad.
To ensure that all staff are aware of the new products, once the video/datasheet are uploaded to the LMS, each member of staff receives notification for each new product available in store for the customers to order. Products that are no longer available are deactivated and are no longer available to the employees.
Cost Savings to the Company:
- Training Costs are down 43%
- On average each salesperson is achieving an increase of 26% in sales
- Problems with incorrect orders have dropped by 62%
- Sales of Product Warranties have increased by 70%
- Retention of Employees has Increased by 39%
In Conclusion:
We can only arrive at a feasible and usable training system when all stakeholders are included in the planning and production of the training modules/courses and we take into account the advice and experience of all individuals concerned with the company. When we leave any one of the stakeholders out of the loop we create training systems that are substandard and will never return the return on expectations (ROE) expected by the executive management team.