Corporate Learning: Training Doesn’t Have to Be Old School

Corporate learning programs get a bad rap because people assume you just sit through an endless string of boring training sessions. How can employees learn when they have to suffer through 10-hour sessions with instructors akin to Charlie Brown’s teacher? Whaa-whaa-whaa.   

Your employees already went to school, so now’s the time to change the way your company approaches learning.

Beef Up Corporate Learning

“Beef up” doesn’t mean “add more of the same.” We’re talking about making the learning more meaningful. When corporate learning can be integrated with development plans, employees know there’s a reason why they might need to attend training or complete a learning activity in the first place.

Look to diversify your current learning offerings. You could use online learning modules that employees can complete on their own, saving you the time and expense of trying to get everyone in a room. Videos can provide just-in-time training when an employee needs a refresher, and a wiki can include the most up-to-date information on a project.

Don’t forget about the topics. If your learning library only offers training on mastering Excel or Word, your employees could be missing out. Ask around — what do your employees wish they knew? There are going to be a number of missed learning opportunities for a variety of situations. For example, an employee traveling overseas on the company’s behalf for the first time could watch a quick video on how to prepare for travel, how to behave in the country, and how to manage time and expenses.

Don’t Make Learning a Distraction

When corporate learning programs force employees to put their jobs on hold, everyone sees the drop in productivity. Instead, learning should help people improve their skills without pulling them away from their daily tasks for too long.

Homework takes on a new meaning with corporate learning. Instead of theoretical pre-work, have employees bring on-the-job challenges to training sessions. Activities should focus on improving the employee’s job performance instead of completing exercises that appear irrelevant. By focusing on job-related topics, employees could end up developing templates and processes you wouldn’t have known you needed if you’d stayed in the theoretical.

There are many options for learning programs and technology on the market. Adding modules or updating systems might be expensive, but if you build in proper tracking, the investment is worth it. When you combine tracking with a beefed-up program that doesn’t distract employees, you will make your corporate learning program a success.

Now What? Why Continuous Learning Improves Performance

It’s been six months since your latest performance review. You had walked out of your boss’s office with a development plan in hand, and you were ready to get started.

And then it got busy. And there was that emergency project. And you suddenly realize you’ve made zero progress on that plan. OK, well, no one’s really paying attention. You can say you worked on “improving communications” — just send a few more emails. It’s not like there are training classes or checklists for you to actually use as part of your development.

As a learning manager, that’s not the picture you want to see. You want employees not just thinking about development but also acting on their plans. You want managers to be involved year-round, not just at the annual performance review. You want a continuous learning culture.

But how do you get there?

The first step is easy: Know what you’re doing now. Do the development plans include clear actions? Or are the steps vague, with subjective measures of improvement? Do you offer a library of training materials or budget to reimburse employees if they seek outside training? You want to perform an audit of everything you’re currently doing at your company with learning, including getting some honest feedback from employees. Do you offer online training but no one uses it? Find out why.

Next, review the gaps in your program. Once you’ve done your audit, you can match the current state with the desired state to see the gaps. Maybe you’re not using an online Learning Management System (LMS) or there isn’t budget to send employees to outside training. Or maybe employees just don’t know what you offer. See where the gaps are and determine which areas are priorities for improvement.

Bring the learning and development together. Ideally, a development plan would have action items that match the learning activities your company offers. “Improving communications” would include the online module about giving feedback, a quarterly check on communication styles and perhaps written exercises so the employee can practice. Bringing the current state and ideal state together requires some work, but you can start small. Do an internal communications campaign to tell employees what resources are available to them. Informing the workforce is a good way to get people to use the programs. Next, revamp the review process, making the development plan more reflective of the learning programs you have in place. Then start looking at changing the resources. You can find technology that automatically creates development goals or has progress checks for managers.

A continuous learning culture doesn’t have to come with a big investment upfront. Knowing what is happening in your company and which areas you want to tweak can start making changes for you immediately. As you plan ahead, include these audits on a regular basis. You won’t get to the ideal state right away, but you’ll be marking progress so you know how you’re doing. Just like in your own development plan.

Development On Demand — Improving Employee Adoption of an Integrated Learning Management System

HR organizations understand the important role that a Learning Management System (LMS) can play in increasing the knowledge base of their workforce. And moving the learning experience online makes good business sense — a well-implemented LMS can potentially enable 25 to 35 percent improvement in learning operational effectiveness and efficiency.[1]

 

In many organizations, however, the overall effectiveness of e-learning delivered through an LMS remains an issue because of low user adoption of the system. Why? The reasons are many — it may be due to a lack of integration of e-learning into the wider learning and talent management strategy, insufficient planning, or a poor user experience reported with the LMS technology. Failing to achieve prolific user adoption will prevent the organization from achieving the best possible ROI of the LMS technology, and can result in:

·        Low or limited employee usage

·        Users expressing frustration and experiencing difficulty with the new system

·        Poor performance results at the individual and division level

Despite these risks, implementing an integrated LMS can fundamentally change the business and improve the ability of individuals or groups to do their jobs. Before going forward with implementation, take into consideration the following key factors for the greatest success of an integrated LMS — culture, communication and customers.

 

Culture. Give plenty of thought to the readiness of your organization for accepting the new system:

·        Do executives and line managers support the new technology, and how will they visibly promote the importance of its use? Getting active buy-in from the leaders of your organization can address perceived concerns over the value of the new system.

·        Prepare employees for the differences they’ll experience between traditional classroom learning and e-learning. E-learning through an LMS emphasizes that the employee is responsible for their own learning, and some employees may not be equipped with the discipline necessary to complete online coursework. Unleash your LMS internal champions to help employees understand the value an LMS will bring to their role and their career aspirations.

Communication. Prepare and evangelize a PR and communication plan for your LMS implementation early on, and use different mediums to spread the word and inform your audience. But be wary of over-engineering your communication strategy. As Mark Twain once said, “The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.” Keep communications simple and straightforward, and talk about what your audience will find meaningful rather than what’s important to you. Tap into your company’s intranet or internal social media channels to generate learning and development discussion and spark conversations with your internal community.

Customers. Consider the “personas” of who will interact with the system, what they will uniquely need to be successful, and how the LMS will help them improve and grow in their career. When the LMS is fully integrated with the organization’s broader talent management strategy and performance management systems, your employees will see compounding benefits and a “familiarity of use” from these learning tools. For example, an LMS can bridge information from the employee’s performance appraisal to the creation of a customized development plan. When e-learning coursework and activities are specifically targeted to grow competencies or improve performance, the employee will be positively reinforced for completing their learning and development plans when performance improvement is recognized and rewarded in subsequent reviews. And with rich, Web-based e-learning content available online, employees can access and integrate learning activities into their work at their moment of need, wherever they may be.    

A fully integrated Learning Management System is a smart investment for any company looking to boost organizational performance. Before unveiling a new system in your company, create a detailed user adoption plan to ensure that your implementation garners a positive reception from everyone in the company.

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[1] Clarey, Janet. Choosing an LMS: Differentiating the Needs of the SMB Market. Bersin & Associates. August 2011.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall — Reflections of Performance: Five tips for writing an effective self-assessment.

There it is — the email invitation from your manager suggesting a date for your next performance appraisal. No sweat, you think. You’ve been killing deadlines and kicking the competition for the past six months. But what’s that last sentence? “A self-assessment should be completed prior to the meeting.”

Unless you’re a practicing narcissist, the idea of assessing one’s own performance leaves most employees either cold or confused. “What if I underrate my performance and negatively influence my manager’s assessment?” “If I toot my own horn, won’t it come off like I’m boasting?”

Employee self-assessments have been widely accepted for some time, and for good reason. Asking employees to evaluate their work against their own standards of performance gives the manager insightful perspective to use when preparing feedback.

Don’t leave employees scratching their heads, not knowing what to expect from the process. Share these best practices to help them reflect honestly and accurately on their performance:

1.      Tap your long-term memory. It’s easy to forget about the accomplishments or learnings from long ago. Cite specific and relevant examples of performance throughout the entire time frame under review.

2.      Be confident. This isn’t the time for modesty. Your manager has asked for specific examples of your performance, so highlight your accomplishments with professionalism and humility, and distinguish between “I” and “we” when referring to team-based assignments.

3.      Request development. Consider areas where you might benefit from additional learning or development. Be prepared to suggest specific training or developmental activities that will improve your performance and help you to contribute in your role.

4.      Focus on results. Present accomplishments that best support the company’s key business drivers. Use objective data for support, such as delivering early on completion dates, bringing costs in under budget or achieving high customer-satisfaction scores.

5.      Stay open minded. Remember that your perception of performance represents a single, biased viewpoint. Self-assessments and performance appraisals rarely align perfectly. Use this as an opportunity to explore and learn from differences of opinion related to your performance. 

Reviewsnap Partners with OpenSesame for Enhanced Delivery of Performance Management Solution

Reviewsnap, the leading cloud-based performance management software solution, today announced a powerful partnership with OpenSesame, the e-learning marketplace. The alliance integrates the services of both companies, giving customers of either vendor greater and more streamlined access to performance management content.

“With this partnership, our customers will have the tools to instantly act on performance information to more directly and immediately enhance their organization’s capacity to bring learning into the workflow,” said Chris Arringdale, vice president of marketing for Reviewsnap. The combination of the Reviewsnap and OpenSesame platforms will “ultimately accelerate the speed of innovation and improvement for any of our customers,” Arringdale said.

Reviewsnap is a performance management system that lets managers and supervisors give real-time, detailed feedback to employees, while capturing meaningful data about performance at the organizational level. OpenSesame is an online marketplace of corporate training courses. Its clients can choose from thousands of courses, read customer reviews, watch course previews and instantly use purchased courses.

The two companies will offer an integrated platform for the employees of Reviewsnap customers to connect with online training opportunities based on gaps in performance competency identified through the Reviewsnap performance system.

“OpenSesame has reviewed and selected course curricula based on core competencies defined by Reviewsnap,” said OpenSesame CEO Don Spear. These include courses in areas such as business acumen, customer service and communication skills. “Excellent training courses from OpenSesame’s 100-plus developers will be embedded in the Reviewsnap platform, giving employees instant access to performance improvement opportunities,” Spear said.

About Reviewsnap

In times like these, growth is earned by companies that align their people behind shared goals. If you are working to get everyone on the same page, Reviewsnap is with you. More than performance management software, we offer true partnership through genuine customer service and support. And unlike those other guys who care more about shareholders than customers, we can’t sleep at night unless you can. We are all together now. We are your performance management partner. We are Reviewsnap. Visit us on the Web at www.reviewsnap.com or follow @reviewsnap on Twitter.

About OpenSesame

Based in Portland, Ore., OpenSesame is an open marketplace connecting e-learning buyers and sellers. Buyers browse thousands of courses in a wide variety of subjects, from workplace safety to business skills, all compatible with any learning management system. For more information, visit www.OpenSesame.com or follow @OpenSesame on Twitter.