As the marketplace becomes more complex and organizations expect employees to adapt more quickly, learning organizations may need to change the way they develop employees. To help learning organizations evolve their perspectives, Deloitte Consulting LLP haveve worked with a number of clients to build an approach that engages employees at multiple points, leverages different modalities to engage different learning styles, and provides just-in-time support to remind employees of key processes after they initially absorb the information.
This approach, learner-centric learning, places the individual at the center of the scenario and uses diverse methods to inform, engage, and reinforce the key messaging.
This approach can help to:
l Communicate the purpose of the changes to employees before the requirements become active and engage learners across an extended time period.
l Integrate multiple modalities to support all learning styles.
l Provide just-in-time support to employees at the points when they enter relevant transactions.
l Embed risk management techniques to provide real-time feedback to employees who enter inaccurate or incomplete information. This article explains an approach and outlines a specific scenario that achieved dynamic results.
This article is constructed to:
l Introduce the approach.
l Explain how to implement and integrate the various components of the approach.
l Provide real-world examples of its integration. • Offer leading practices when implementing a learner-centric learning approach.
To demonstrate the application of learner-centric learning, this paper includes a case study that describes how we worked with one of our clients to increase employee awareness on a specific compliance topic.
In this case, we used the approach to help them address the topic of transparency (the open disclosure of funds used for marketing purposes to specific doctors). Organizations can implement similar approaches for almost any learning need.
A learner-centric approach is a dynamic method that engages learners over an extended time period using various modalities and feedback mechanisms to reinforce key messaging and promote desired behavior changes.
Learner-centric learning involves five key components:
l Consistent messaging that learners receive over a predetermined period and access through a centralized content repository.
l Formal opportunities to increase content awareness and communication of expectations.
l On-demand support that walks learners through activities they must complete independently.
l Dynamic content that allows employees to access information from subject matter experts and pose questions to other learners through various communications channels.
l Risk mitigation feedback delivered to employees and their managers when they enter non-compliant transactions.
Though the learner sits at the middle of the model, the success of the design relies heavily upon leadership engagement and participation. When leaders involve themselves at all stages of the approach, they demonstrate the importance of the information, reinforce key messaging, and coach employees who need additional support. Their involvement also demonstrates the relevance of the information to the learners' work and opens communication lines for both parties to deliver feedback to one another. Though individuals can certainly benefit from a learner-centric learning approach without leadership involvement--it engages employees in the process and demonstrates their leaders' commitment to compliance. Although learner-centric learning requires significant planning upfront and a tremendous effort to execute, the cognitive and behavioral results often justify the effort. Introducing key concepts long before changes occur gives learners the opportunity to process and prepare for the changes, including knowledge of tasks they need to complete prior to the impending changes. Leveraging a central content repository, such as an intranet page or a SharePoint site, as part of the content release allows learners to process the information at their own pace and introduces a location to revisit once the organization implements the changes.
Formal learning opportunities, heavily focused on content awareness rather than on application, provide the context employees should have to adapt to the new compliance requirements, and the opportunities reinforce critical concepts they should know to comply consistently.
E-learning courses provide a valuable vehicle through which organizations can broadly deploy consistent content to a large audience and track employee completions, while team meetings allow leaders to personalize the information and create meaningful connections for their team members.
On-demand support allows learners to access task-related information in order to help accurately and completely finish the required tasks. Paper-based content, such as job aids that employees post at their desks, serve as constant reminders of their tasks and provide instant access to the steps they must complete. Interactive content including simulations offers learners the opportunities to complete tasks in safe environments and receive immediate feedback. Finally, dynamic content reinforces key messages, allows key compliance leaders to engage learners in an open dialogue, and opens opportunities for employees to clarify information.
The creation of a well-designed social media strategy gives organizations the opportunity to dynamically inform employees as compliance requirements evolve and gives learners the opportunity to pose questions to organizational experts in the compliance area.
Effective learner-centric engagement incorporates the following tactics:
1. The organization possesses and regularly leverages multiple communication vehicles when sharing information. Many organizations leverage email as their primary communication vehicle when needing to quickly communicate to large audiences. However, given the large quantity of email employees receive in today's business environment and changes to the way we absorb information via email, employees actually comprehend limited amounts of information via email. To receive the full benefits of an awareness campaign, it helps to introduce only the most critical content and drive employees to a centralized content repository through emails. It's also helpful to avoid implementing changes to communication styles while introducing compliance requirements; use a recognizable communication vehicle during this time.
2. The organization has processes or a formal system in place to track dissemination of compliance information. The agencies that monitor organizational compliance require internal compliance groups to provide analytics demonstrating their adherence. When presenting their cases to governing bodies, compliance leaders support their cases when they openly demonstrate that they communicate compliance requirements to employees and offer them opportunities to engage with the information formally. Organizations with significant resources often rely upon learning management systems to track the completion of formal learning opportunities; organizations without the luxury of learning management systems most likely track attendance at meetings and broad communications including emails.
3. The organization uses a content repository where employees can access information about the compliance requirements. Learning materials, meeting presentations, and task-support materials must reside somewhere, requiring the presence of a shared space for employees to access information. It may be helpful for the organizations post information on a shared drive, site, or intranet page that employees easily access. The ability to easily access available information encourages learners to revisit the information consistently and increases information clarity for the people who must comply.
4. The organization's leaders commit to communicating openly with employees about compliance status and participate in conversations when employees seek information and context. As the approach shows, effective learner-centric learning approaches involve heavy leadership participation. When leaders engage learners in compliance-related conversations, they demonstrate their own personal compliance commitment and allow learners to clarify expectations when confusion arises. At a minimum, employees expect leaders to openly discuss compliance requirements in team meetings and answer questions when they arise. If leaders participate in conversations on broad communication channels such as social media, their participation further reinforces the importance of compliance efforts.
While deployment of learner-centric learning approaches varies some based on organizational conditions, these hints can be helpful:
l Assess organizational communication vehicles and determine the modalities that employees most commonly use.
l Engage leaders early in the process, and provide them with easy-to-use resources that they can deploy in manners that best work for their teams.
l Develop a communication strategy that leverages various modalities and provides broad messaging across the organization.
l Create a central content repository that houses the most current information and allows learners to review when necessary.
l Focus formal learning opportunities on awareness of key concepts and utilize easily accessible support materials to walk learners through critical compliance tasks.
l Generate opportunities for continued conversation about key compliance topics, either through social vehicles or in-person meetings. Learner-centric learning approaches can increase awareness of compliance issues, drive employees to accessible resources, and demonstrate the organization's commitment to compliance. Dissemination of compliance information through commonly used communication modalities provides contextual information employees need to understand the purpose of the requirements.
Formal learning opportunities communicate expectations and allow employees to engage with critical messaging. Support materials that employees can access on demand reinforce key concepts and allow them to rely upon the materials when completing key compliance tasks. Ongoing, informal communication opportunities, with leadership involvement, keep learners up to date on relevant compliance information and increase clarity of information.
When put together into a synchronous plan, this approach can give employees the support they need before they have to comply, while they complete required compliance tasks, and, for the foreseeable future, while they change the way they operate to establish ongoing compliance.
In an effort to increase organizational awareness to transparency compliance and prepare employees to complete new transparency-related activities, we first assess the organization's preparedness for the change.
With a good understanding of organization-specific needs, you can begin to plan out the five key components of the approach:
l Awareness campaign
l Formal learning
l Performance support
l Informal learning
l Risk mitigation Components of Effective Awareness Campaigns
To increase organizational awareness of transparency regulations, reinforce key internal messaging, express the importance of compliance tasks, and prepare employees for the associated changes, compliance teams first execute in-depth awareness campaigns that engage employees at several pre-determined times.
The following elements would be important for an effective awareness campaign:
Core messaging architecture: Identifies critical messaging for consistency across all modalities and simplifies the release of information.
Intranet page: Creates a centralized content repository where employees can easily access the most current internal and external transparency content, as well as support materials.
Multimodal communications: Succinctly communicates critical compliance information and drives employees to other resources such as the intranet page and the social media community.
Leadership toolkit and meeting presentations: Provides additional contextual information to leaders so they can openly discuss transparency with their employees, communicate key messaging through their preferred communication methods, and reinforce key messaging from the course itself.
After increasing awareness across the organization, teams implementing learner-centric approaches should introduce formal opportunities to educate employees about the topic.
Teams can launch formal learning opportunities using a variety of modalities, but e-learning provides a great reach and effective mechanism for capturing completions. If the organization prefers to train people in person, instructor-led training provides face-to-face contact with employees to answer any questions, but this method also requires manual attendance tracking. To increase the value of the formal training opportunities, limit the content to topics related to the compliance requirements. Too often compliance training overwhelms employees with too much detail about the laws themselves and the actions they need to take.
Accessing information when they need it to do their job from the content repository increases relevance to their roles and improves information retention. For other topics--such as specific details about the laws, system tasks, and who to contact with questions--information should be readily available for employees in an easy-to-access format.
To reduce completion time and increase retention, limit courses to approximately 30 minutes. Though this shifts from the tendencies of many learning organizations, employees often take away more from courses that focus on key topics and assess their knowledge periodically throughout the course. To further reinforce the training's importance and encourage quick completions, limit the amount of time learners have to complete the course to two weeks. Though new compliance requirements certainly encourage employees to complete compliance courses, limiting the course completion window creates urgency in learners' minds, and drove the results we anticipated. In this case, it worked as planned.
Rather than teaching people how to use systems or complete specific tasks in e-learning courses, create ancillary materials that walk learners through the steps to complete various compliance tasks. The performance support materials provide learners just-in-time support that they access as they complete compliance tasks. This is often more effective than expecting learners to remember critical steps from a previously completed e-course.
The performance support artifacts may include:
Job Aids: Short one-page cards that walk participants through just the actions required to complete the tasks.
Reference Guides: Longer guides that walk participants through the steps with graphics demonstrating the various system interactions.
Embedded Simulation: System simulations that allow learners to practice tasks in a simulated environment with immediate feedback before they begin completing tasks in the live system.
To reinforce key messages and create opportunities for ongoing transparency dialogues between learners and subject matter experts, your team can create a social media community. A community may contain links to additional resources, as well as provide a discussion forum to allow learners to communicate directly with transparency experts.
Much of the early activity will involve subject matter experts posting transparency-related comments and sharing links to external information to build the site's user population. As the community evolves, learners can post questions to the community, with the intent of receiving answers from organizational experts and their fellow community members. Building a solid community takes time and effort.
To encourage participation, site administrators should create a draw that inspires potential members to visit the site and communicate with other community members.
© The Saudi Gazette 2014
