Beyond the Zoom Boom: How to future-proof your L&D model and drive down your cost to train.

Whitepaper

L&D

The Zoom boom: The immediate response to COVID-19

Will face-to-face make a comeback?

Developing a sustainable online strategy

Spend your budget wisely

Rethinking the role of L&D to power-up online training

From L&D teams as the order takers...

To being a center of excellence

Crowdsource elearning production

Final thoughts

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Contents

The Zoom boom: The immediate response to COVID-19

When COVID-19 closed the door on face-to-face training, the world switched to webinars, conference calls and virtual instructor-led training (VILT). It was the easiest first step to make - taking the same content and delivering it online. But this band-aid didn’t stick. The use of VILT decreased from 67% of organizations as the pandemic hit to 40% a couple of months later (Brandon Hall 2020).

Training and learning teams ran into a common pitfall: Face-to-face training sessions don’t translate directly into effective virtual experiences.

Alongside this, live virtual sessions can be logistically challenging and don’t scale well. Facilitators may have to run the same sessions multiple times, and consistency can be questionable. Good virtual sessions include interaction, so sharing a recording does not create a good experience for those who missed it.

For big global employers, both face-to-face and VILT have the same Achilles heel: they’re time consuming and hard to run at scale.

VILT declined after the immediate rush (though it hasn’t gone away). Organizations looked to other online options, adapting quickly to the new world of online training. In just a couple of months, elearning emerged as the most common approach to online training.

Are organizations moving to more of a digital online blend? The uptake of our Digital Learning Skill-Up, which focused on how to develop a blended program, would suggest real demand.

Percent of organizations using different modalities during the COVID-19 pandemic (Brandon Hall Group 2020) - April 1 vs June 22.

72% 63% 62% 49% 45% 42% 33% 18%37% April 1 86% April 1 38% April 1 96% April 1 29% April 1 22% April 1 19% April 1 3% April 1

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Will face-to-face make a comeback?

According to an Elucidat survey, only 13% of organizations plan to fully revert to previous levels of face-to-face training. And a Fosway survey found that only 5% think learning strategy, investment and re-sourcing will go back to what they were before the pandemic. “The pandemic has been a catalyst for a much deeper adoption of digital learning,” said David Perring, Director of Research, The Fosway Group.

The move away from face-to-face is good news for budgets, too. In our survey, 53% expect to make savings, and 21% think they’ll save at least a quarter of their overall budget.

So, what next?

HR and learning teams need to develop a sustainable approach to online training that’s scalable and genuinely effective. HR and learning teams need to seize this rare opportunity for accelerated digital transformation. Now is the time to develop a sustainable approach to online training that’s scalable and genuinely effective.

What impact will focusing less on face-to-face and more on online training have on your budget?

Our COVID-19 research shows that no organizations plan to increase face-to-face learning in the next 12 months. Obviously, that is a reflection of the pandemic situation,

which makes live learning events impossible or unsafe. But the percentage of organizations expanding their ILT learning has decreased slowly but steadily over the past couple of years.

So the pandemic is greatly accelerating the pace of change. Our COVID-19 research shows that 80% of organizations believe their use of digital learning will remain the same, increase or decrease only slightly as restrictions on live training ease. We think the long-

predicted, long-awaited ascent of digital learning is here to stay.

-Claude Werder, Senior Vice President and Principal HCM Analyst, Brandon Hall Group

The shift to digital learning and online training is here to stay. Brandon Hall Group benchmarking data (June 2020) shows that 0% of organizations plan to increase face-to-face in the next 12 months.

45%

21%

20%

12%

No cost saving

Saving 25% or more

Saving 10-25%

Saving up to 10%

While social distancing and travel restrictions were the catalysts for many organizations to embrace online training, environmental concerns and cost-saving will be drivers moving forward. But taking a digital approach to training and learning isn’t something we should just do out of necessity. From innovative ways of creating connections between learners to enabling you to deliver on-demand training, online blended training programs offer wide-reaching opportunities for HR and learning leaders to embrace.

Elearning has emerged as a primary approach to training employees in the wake of COVID-19. To be successful, elearning shouldn’t be seen as a catch-all, but instead as part of a blended strategy. In this capacity, elearning has the power to offer on-demand training and a data trail that enables you to check it is having the desired business impact. This is critical to knowledge retention and behavior change. It allows you to get training in the right place at the right time, regardless of employee start date, working hours, etc.

The problem is, elearning has a bad name.

Research by Brandon Hall shows that elearning can be perceived as less effective, but we know that is not the case when it is done well. Our own research demonstrates that when done properly, elearning is a better use of time and provides a more relevant and personalised experience. The benefits of this are increased productivity, a much lower cost to train and a more engaged workforce.

Developing a sustainable online strategy

£53k/course

£5.3k/course

106 hours to produce one elearning course.

Cost of elearning if you can produce it in 10% of the time.

Moving away from face-to-face for the long term can save you a lot of money. Investing in online approaches can help you to radically reduce your cost per head to train.

Unfortunately, the way many organizations approach the production of online training is still painfully slow and costly.

When it comes to production of elearning, we were gobsmacked to discover how much some companies are spending. According to a 2017 Brandon Hall Group research, on average it costs £53,742 and 106 hours to produce one elearning course. This is madness - and completely unnecessary! In fact, we know that with the right platform in place, you should be able to spend less than producing any other type of training, while using people’s time more effectively when it comes to training provision. A win-win.

With the right approach, you should be able to produce elearning in 10% of this time.

If you’re planning to lean on elearning (there are huge benefits in doing so), then you need to do it right.

Spend your budget wisely:

Reduce your cost-to-produce

Great elearning has the power to revolutionize the way organizations support their workforce. Can you find a way to accelerate the production of elearning and reduce those costs? We set out some recommendations below.

The cost to produce elearning should be less like this...

and more like this...

The main training cost to big employers is not the software, the learning designers, the subject matter experts, or the time to produce elearning. The biggest cost is the time it takes the learner to be trained. Employees need to spend at least some time away from their everyday duties for training each year.

Take product/service knowledge training as an example. In 70% of companies, people are spending at least 4 hours per year on this type of training - 31% over 10 hours. The compound effect of that for big employers is massive - so you’d better be sure you’re using that time well!

At Elucidat we have seen learning programmes that have significantly reduced learning time, while delivering the same (or even better) business performance impact. The way this can be achieved is by designing experiences that respect time. Respecting time is one of the core principles of people-centered learning. The success of training should never be judged on the time spent, but on the behavior changed and the goals met. So, how can you maximize training impact while taking people away from their day job for as little time as possible? Your employees will thank you for it - and so will your CEO.

Stage of digital transformation Organizations who were immature in their adoption of digital learning were three times more likely to have found coping with the pandemic difficult compared to those with a mature approach, according to a Fosway Group COVID-19 survey.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from this crisis, it’s that future-proofing your strategy is critical. So, whether your digital transformation was already well on the road or if coronavirus catapulted you forward, building strong foundations in your ecosystem and culture will make you more resilient and adaptable to change.

Did your team rely on instructor-led training in the past, or do you have digitally-savvy team members who are comfortable with designing online experiences? Either way, your training is likely to be more digital than ever. This means more people needing to be involved in producing elearning alongside other modalities in your blend. How will you enable this without overwhelming your current elearning designers? How will you ensure quality and keep pace with demand for up-to-date training?

Reduce your cost-to-train

Skills and capacity in your HR and L&D teams

Think beyond leadership trainingTraining dollars are heavily skewed toward leaders, with $1,000 spent per learner on senior leadership training. Training investment in individual contributors looks more like $100-500. The expectation is a trickle-down approach; great leaders will build effective and productive teams. But they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

Online training, and elearning in particular, gives you the ability to invest in your entire workforce in a more equal way. Those individual contributors are the lifeblood of your company. Even marginal gains in their performance can have an enormous impact on business results and productivity. Organizational change requires everyone. Go beyond coaching programs and leadership development training. Enable your leaders to give the nudges and support to the people for whom they’re responsible.

$1,000 $100-500

elearning

Per learner on senior leadership training Training investment in individual contributors

Gives you the ability to invest in your entire workforce

As touched upon above, the increased demand for online training can cause friction for learning and training teams. Your learning design specialists can feel like order takers, swamped with demand from across the business.

There’s often resistance to letting subject matter experts be hands-on in an authoring tool, usually due to concern that quality and consistency will go out the window.

Traditionally, elearning has been like a craft. It pleases those making it but often fails to deliver against operational KPIs. To be taken seriously, elearning has to demonstrate that it’s a good use of people’s time. And by people, we’re referring to the thousands of people in your organization who need to be trained.

The solution? Rethink the role of your L&D team.

Rather than see L&D as the order takers for training, turn them into centers of excellence. Think of L&D as the facilitators of organizational transformation. They should be driving best practice and crowdsourcing the very best knowledge from across the business for targeted training where it’s needed.

This approach allows the L&D team to spend more time driving standards and identifying where training interventions can have the greatest impact on the organization.

In this model, the L&D team leads the strategy: identifying the development opportunities and experts across the organization to enable the sharing of business critical learning..

When it comes to the more targeted and personalized training for specific teams, departments or regions the L&D team can empower subject matter experts, or ‘connectors’. Connectors are staff at a regional level who are able to transform and adapt the centralised training materials to speak to their region L&D provide the guidelines, best practices and tools that enable others across the business to produce online training - whilst ensuring consistently high standards.

Rethinking the role of L&D

From L&D teams as the order takers...

To being a center of excellence Plug in experts from across the organization. Increase the volume of high-quality training materials that can be produced.

Wholefoods is a great example of an L&D team that moved to a more centralized model of training. Their L&D team has ownership of quality, but they’re collaborating and acting as consultants to regional teams to raise standards and ensure consistency:

Though we have centralized the production of the material, we have not centralized the input. We’re not in a silo. So it really is a collaborative product that is put out, but it’s a centralized team that is managing the project plan, the implementation, the communication, the roll out and the maintenance of the program. That way, we

know that a team member in San Francisco is getting the same level of onboarding as a team member in New York City. Whereas previously we knew they were getting

a couple of core classes, but we couldn’t guarantee they were getting the same information, now we can.

- Tracie Cantu, Director of Learning Technology at Wholefoods

Hear more about Wholefoods’ approach to L&D on the Learning at Large Podcast - listen to their episode here.

If the L&D team is to become a center of excellence, you need to enable more people across the organization to produce elearning. These people need to be empowered to produce quality, people-centered experiences that respect time and deliver impact. But, how do you do this?

Crowdsource elearning production

The L&D team should set out clear guidelines to help people in your organization produce elearning consistently at the expected quality. These guidelines should include things like:

• A standard design framework or process to follow

• Guiding principles to shape how training is approached (like the people-centered principles we follow at Elucidat)

• Visual branding. If you use Elucidat, you can set brand style and use the asset library to create a bank of approved images etc.

• Writing tips to help SMEs produce consistent content

The L&D team should make it clear what good looks like and make it as easy as possible for people to achieve it! Some great ways to do this include:

• Creating a best practice inspiration library with examples of successful elearning projects. Feel free to borrow from our showcase of elearning examples - if you use Elucidat, we can gift most of these into your account for you to edit and use!

• Give access to elearning course templates so users don’t have to start from scratch. If you’re using Elucidat, your SMEs can duplicate from an existing course - or speed things up further by using Learning Accelerator blueprints.

1. Set out guidelines

2. Enable best practice

Best Practice Workshop

Work with Elucidat learning consultants to develop a transformation strategy that works for your business and your learners. From the direction to take to how to measure the results!

Learn more about our services.

Make sure your L&D team has the right technologies in place to produce, deliver and track great training and learning experiences. If you’re a large organization with thousands of employees to train, it’s unlikely you’ll find a tool that does it all well. Instead, look for best-of-breed solutions that work well together.

Technology should be an enabler. Look for tools that give your L&D team what they need to become the center of excellence for training in your organization.

3. Get the right tools in place

Drive down the cost of your business critical training

• Make it easy for anyone to produce great elearning

• Speed up production

• Enable collaboration with global teams

• Keep pace with regional needs

Ask yourself:• Can your team confidently give access to

more people to produce elearning, without compromising quality? To help give L&D teams this confidence, Elucidat user management features are designed to give complete confidence to invite more users into your account.

• Do your licences let you add enough users? Make sure you’re not having to swap licences around and that you’re not paying silly per-author prices.

• Do you work with vendors, or partners? A partner will invest much more in your success - they’re not just selling a software, and they’ll be working with you to deliver on the results you need. You can find out about the support and services Elucidat offers here.

Get Started Today

How can you leverage a network of people in your organization to make sure your training can be delivered in a more personal way, at regional level?

Create a network of connectors across your organization. These are people who will be the link between the L&D team and specific regions, teams or departments. For example, they might be in the legal and compliance team or regional sales leaders. They are the people who L&D can empower to take central learning and adapt it for regional or specific needs. Or who can produce personalized courses needed within their teams while being supported by the centralized L&D team.

The L&D team at PVH took this approach to partner with people across the business:“Working directly with regional counterparts to really identify who our strong partners that we know are good at their area of expertise, who are willing to work with us. So we can figure out exactly what standards we need to set and how we best disseminate that out.” Megan Comerford, Vice President of Talent Development PVH

Hear more about PVH’s approach to L&D on the Learning at Large Podcast - listen to their episode here.

4. Identify and engage your connectors

The coronavirus pandemic disrupted lives beyond belief. One silver lining is the acceleration of digital transformation that’s had to take place. There are enormous benefits to be gained from online training. Ultimately, you can deliver more training, where it’s most needed, in a more cost-effective and time-efficient way. The time is now, and this is an opportunity that HR and L&D teams should grasp with both hands.

Final thoughts

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