I think within my organization one of the most dreaded emails we get every year is the subject line “Colleagues Essential Training is now Available". Along with this email it advises us the links to the training as well as a timeframes when all our annual training has to be done and consequence of not doing it (i.e. loss of pay and up to termination) This type of Elearning is the most common I have been exposed to in my life sure I have taken the occasional Linkedin courses. We cannot forget what happened with COVID my teenage kids were forced into an unprepared online learning situation. I don’t blame the teachers as they were not prepared or trained for such a situation, so I know they tried their best but some teachers adapted quicker than others.
So after a few weeks of ignoring that email, I clicked the link to access the training LMS system to see how many training modules and I saw the number 28. I think to myself well this is the 24th year I have done these types of training modules at my organization… I wonder if they have been updated or if they are the same ones I have done over and over again throughout the years. So I jump into the 1st one on this list because they are not in any specific order as there has been no thought into the best way for the colleague to learn and retain this information. I quickly realized hey this is the same one I did last year so it looks like this will be a bunch of click…click…click take a quiz but don’t worry if you miss a question you can try again as many times as you want. I forgot to mention that some of the training modules offer you the chance or force you to take a pretest quiz and if you get 100% you can skip the training all together and be finished with that module. Sounds enticing, the problem is taking the pretest can take you just as long as taking the entire module, if you miss one of 15 questions it requires you to take the entire course. Other times the pretest will exclude certain training elements from the module that you answered right but you have no clue going into the pretest.
The inconsistency of the training modules is what drives me crazy. I think when you are part of a large organization these modules are developed in silos and there seems to be no overall theme of the design or structure that is used throughout each group that develops these trainings. Also with the time that it takes to create each module I don’t see leadership allowing resources to redesign to fit a specific theme if the module serves its purpose. So the cycle of inconsistent training modules is a hard cycle to break.
So let's talk about the training modules themselves to be honest most of the time I don’t really read the information unless the training pertains to my role. What happens is most colleagues figure out the system to get through it as quickly as possible, click…click…click take the check in knowledge questions along the way. (ProTip: if “all the above” is an option, that's the answer) and then you have a final quiz at the end. Recently I took a training that was just a powerpoint presentation that had been added to the LMS platform with a delayed click next button thinking that was enough to make sure the colleague would read and retain the information. This was a perfect example of the key stakeholders knowing they had to deliver the information to the colleagues immediately. In their mind there was no time for a needs analysis or development of the training itself.
Now there was one training module for a few years I always looked forward to and it had to do with cybersecurity, keeping data safe, not falling for phishing emails and keeping your laptop secured in a public place. This training module had a mix of information that we had to read but also had a storyline video that went along with it that kept your attention. So the scene starts off with a colleague in their office clicking on a phishing email that cloned the look of a trusted vendor and contact that they knew. So the colleague agreed to send the file of account numbers unencrypted as the vendor was “supposedly” having technical issues. Now the next scene shows a sinister looking guy in a dark room with a bunch of computers and he had the perfect evil laugh when he gets the email. Then he turns to his accomplice who is a twenty something gal who looks the part of a grunge hacker person and she is like “I am now posting them onto the dark web and we will make thousands of dollars” as they both laugh. As you can see, even though that has been years ago, I remember so much of that training because some designer took the time to think about the learner and how they will retain the information being told.
I know it would be a pipe dream to think I could get all the instructional designers and SMEs into one room with the size of my organization to create a consistent structure that could be used for every module moving forward throughout the enterprise. I think what would be possible is to start within my own business unit and influence the idea of creating structure that becomes the foundation of how our business unit training modules are created and developed. I am not asking that every training module be developed the same way as we know people learn differently. So creative methods need to be used like gamification, videos, VR , & Doodly type animation but using a solid strategy that focuses on how the colleague learns and will it change their behavior in their specific role to produce the results that the key stakeholders want.
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