With eLearning Content, Being Real Counts
The phrase “Fake it til you make it” may have its uses, but let’s be real: perpetually pretending to be something or someone you’re not is exhausting. In fact, authenticity is increasingly cited as a critical element of success for business today. Consider a recent Harvard Business Review article, Creating the Best Workplace on Earth, which cites research from the London Business School indicating that employees that feel encouraged to express their authentic selves at work maintain a higher degree of commitment to the organization, greater individual performance and a stronger desire to collaborate.
To capture this, an organization must recognize and be true to its own authentic self. Branding and mission statements can help quantify what kind of company an organization aspires to be, but action and follow-through on those ideals is significantly more powerful. Clear communication and the integration of programs and platforms like eLearning help support an organizations’ authentic self and demonstrate its espoused values for employees.
The Human Capital Institute interviewed Laura Trozzi, a former Talent Management Specialist at Kleinfelder, to learn more about how she was able to develop a sustainable self-directed learning program with the help of SuccessFactors, an SAP Company. Kleinfelder is an employee-owned engineering, architecture, and science consulting firm, so it had a vested interest in ensuring employees were compliant with re-certifications. Continuing education matters to the company and it launched an eLearning program to support that vision. As Trozzi says, “You can’t force anyone to do anything, but with mandatory compliance training, you kind of can. But what you can’t do is force them to come back.”
To make the program more compelling for employees rather than just obligatory, Kleinfelder’s talent management technology team created pop-up ads during mandatory training sessions that highlighted the voluntary development courses for employees. This kind of communication strategy helps the workforce stay informed about development opportunities in the organization. "I have to be patient and remember that even though we built it, it doesn't mean that people will come. We have to make sure that we are communicating it and reaching as many people as we can, over and over again,” Trozzi says.
After laying the groundwork and monitoring enrollment figures, it became clear that employees were taking advantage of the opportunities. For Trozzi, the positive feedback was both exhilarating and surprising. Her team had used their own voices to narrate several of the eLearning modules, a decision positively received by employees. So much so that Trozzi began outsourcing some of the voice-over narration to subject matter experts in the organization. As she recalls, “It was always fun when people would say, ‘Oh I heard Jean’s voice on that energy presentation, Wow that was great!’ and that resonated with them because they recognized a voice that they already had a rapport with, which lent a lot of credibility to the presentation.”
Finding a champion was one of the keys to successfully establishing an audience for eLearning at Kleinfelder, a concept echoed in another HCI podcast featuring Steve Fogarty, Senior Manager Employer Branding and Digital Recruiting at Adidas Group. Fogarty stresses the importance of integrating “The Human Voice” when communicating through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. “You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable or you compromise the message’s ability to resonate,” he says. “Too often as content designers we spend too much time thinking about how we see ourselves versus how others see us.” One of his suggestions, which Kleinfelder took to heart, is leveraging key contributors that are already ambassadors for the organization.
A real opportunity exists for the social and collaborative experience within an organization to be crowd sourced from within the authentic employee experience. Later next month, TV and radio personality Dr. Greg Ketchum will explore this topic when he presents on a special webcast, Building an Audience for Your eLearning Initiatives. This promises to be an engaging webcast, and Dr. Ketchum will bring a lot of meaningful insights to the table for our members interested in learning and technology to take back to their own organizations.