Epic show report
Implementing E-learning
November 2003
Organiser: E-learning Network
Report by John Helmer, Editor, Epic Thinking
Forget all the thousands of books, leaflets, articles written on
e-learning (including this one), the shedloads of marketing collateral
from suppliers - if e-learning and blended learning are really going
to change the landscape of learning, this is where it will happen:
at ground level - in individual implementations within organisations,
addressing particular organisational challenges.
It was therefore with considerable interest that I attended this
conference, and guess what? I stayed awake almost all the way through.
Selected presentations:
Donna Bennett, Serco plc
Dr. Owen Rose - Information Transfer
Alison Walker, BA
Everybody's going through changes
Speaker: Donna Bennett, Best Practice Centre, Serco plc
Change is a constant of modern business, so the theme of Donna
Bennet's case study will strike a chord with many.
Serco is one of the world's leading outsourcing companies, operating
in markets as diverse as defence, transport, civil government and
science, as well as the private sector. But with increasing use
of technology and fiercer marketplace competition, together with
a new chief exective who naturally came along with a whole new business
strategy, things were changing for the Best Practice Centre (as
the T&D department is known).
From being vertically organised around a number of highly autonomous
business units, Serco now wanted to forge a more unified identity
and be seen as the global leader in outsourced services. This change
acted as a 'wake-up call' for Donna and her colleagues: 'We realised
that we were aligned to our customers at the tactical level but
not at the strategic level'. No, I don't know exactly what it means
either, but it sounds serious, doesn't it? They decided they needed
to launch a major change programme, and to become 'agents of change'.
Getting top level support
The first stage was getting the board and regional executives
to see building change as a key priority - and the the key lesson
that emerged here was 'don't underestimate the need to overcommunicate'.They
had to engage with the HR Directors (now called change directors).
They lost some people, and relocated; trading pleasant but remote
offices in Guildford for a place nearer the hub of things. As an
indication of their success they have 12 monthly meetings booked
with the CEO - and have managed to secure £1.2m investment
from the business to spend on leadership development.
Picking the hot topic
Leadership was identified as the hot topic with which to pilot
e-learning. 'The leadership challenge' was an e-learning package
designed to raise self-awareness with senior executives. It contained
interactive scenarios such as the following. You are the operations
director of a PFI running three hospitals - a crisis breaks and
you have to choose how you are going to deal with it. For instance,
right at the start you have a choice of three different meetings,
with a different composition of bodies represented.
A straw poll of the e-learning network audience at this point showed
a preference for not including the union representative in this
initial meeting - which turned out to be completely the wrong decision.
Mistakes of this kind were rewarded with a plummeting of the share
price, indicated bottom right of the screen. Make enough bad ones,
and you ended up getting booted out of the programme.
The initial plan was to produce ten e-learning courses, but this
aspiration was scaled back fairly drastically. In the end they produced
two programmes last year, of which 'The leadership challenge' was
one.
'Those who are producing e-learning have a dilemma," said
Bennett, 'do they produce programmes aimed at the biggest numbers
- or do they go for a project that will have the greatest strategic
impact on their organisation? We opted for the latter.'
Choosing the right partner
Key learning points here?
1. Find someone to work with who is as committed as you are to delivering
the project
2. Don't try to project manage it youself - Donna speaks from experience
here, having started out trying to do this hands-on, but eventually
having realised that she really didn't have the time.
...To which I'm duty bound to add a third: hire Epic.
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Practice makes perfect
Speaker: Dr. Owen Rose - Information Transfer
Donna Bennet's talk gave a good indication, for all the surface
poise of its presenter, of the tough decisions and corporate 'sturm
und drang' which provide the background to many an implementation.
With Owen Rose, however, we seemed to be in a milder, gentler world.
About twenty minutes into his talk, I realised what it was about
this presenter that seemed so familiar. In his voice and presentation
(though not in appearance) he is a dead ringer for Matthew Collings,
who presents desperately accessible programmes about art on Channel
Four.
The style is breathless, enthusiastic and very engaging. Slightly
trendy-vicar. Perhaps this was what had me hanging on his every
word - or perhaps it was just that he had something genuinely interesting
to say. Dispensing with the hype and high-level juju that afflicts
so many e-learning presentations, Dr Rose detailed three implementations
that varied widely in scope and scale; from the Portman Building
Society's DIY approach, to an enterprise-wide roll-out by a global
pharmaceutical firm.
He did it in an impressively methodical way. In each case he outlined
the barriers that had to be overcome, financial, cultural and technical;
and the decision-making process by which these organisations overcame
the barriers. With some nice cheery outcomes at the end.
The main barrier that any early-stage initiative faces is the 'paradox
of implementation': how can you get experience without actually
doing the implementation? This bind makes some organisations unable
to move forward, because they want absolute answers upfront, and
absolute answers aren't always available with cutting edge stuff
like e-learning. This is probably the reason why many large organisations
still haven't implemented anything.
The three implementations he described overcame this bind by taking
a 'practical approach'; progressing through a combination of theory
and practice. Establish a broad plan, then make something happen.
By deploying something - anything - you'll learn more than through
any other means. Be cautiously adventurous. Use short sentences.
Take lots of breaths.
Key learning point: you have to want it to succeed. There are,
as we know, two types of pilots; those that seek a 'proof of concept'
and those that exist so that someone can say afterwards, 'I told
you that was a bad idea'. Only the former have any chance of success,
and I'd hazard a guess that all three of these implementations fell
firmly into the first category.
Barriers were patiently overcome, initial plans adjusted to take
into account what was learned in the pilot phase, and outcomes duly
exceeded expectations. Things proceeded according to the measured,
calm logic that one only ever sees in case histories...
There is another world outside the conference hall, where mid-project
budget cuts result in a messy scramble to salvage something, anything,
from the work underway - where initiatives get upscaled without
notice, leading to massive scope change at the last minute - where
CEOs walk, share price calls the shots, and where things don't always
pan out as planned. But of that world we heard little in this presentation.
If only life were more like a conference presentation by Dr Owen
Rose.
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Overcoming the odds
Speaker: Alison Walker, British Airways
Over the years, the world's favourite airline has been a good client
of Epic's. We've provided the firm with numerous e-learning programmes
on everything from manual handling to spotting problem customers
(a fairly live issue at the moment). But just in case I were to
think it was our tireless proselytising on behalf of the medium
that makes BA such a consistent user of e-learning (or our trendy
Brighton location) here was Alison Walker to outline the pressing
business drivers that make e-learning - for this organisation in
particular - an absolute no-brainer.
In four years, BA has gone from having no training online to having
22% of all training delivered by this method, due to the following
drivers:
- Globally dispersed workforce
- Onerous compliance requirements
- Intense pressure on costs, in a highly price-competitive market
- High volumes of BA staff training being constantly undertaken
throughout the world
- Major systems 'cut overs'
An example of how these drivers work is given by the recent changeover
from a 30 year-old booking system which meant that BA had to train
30,000 people throughout the world in how to operate the new software.
This could not have been done at all - let alone done cost-effectively
- with classroom-based training.
Necessity is often the mother of - among other things - impressive
cost savings, and that is certainly the case here. An initial 'proof
of concept' purchase of some 400 generic e-learning courses replaced
a total of 3,500 classroom days of training, bringing savings to
BA of some £450,000 on soft skills and £600,000 on IT
technical skills. Oh, and the supplier chucked in an LMS for free.
But the real 'killer app', according to Walker has been the areas
where compliance issues are involved - health and safety, and fire
training, for instance.
All together, BA has saved some £4m with e-learning so far.
These savings have been so impressive that Alison has become the
victim of her own success. There is pressure from some quarters
to move that 22% figure skywards, and achieve further cost saving
- however, Alison is in the unusual position, for a training and
development professional of having to put the brakes on, slightly,
with regard to e-learning (most are trying desperately to find the
accelerator pedal). She wants to preserve an appropriate mix of
online and offline. So a target has been set for 25% of employees'
training needs to be met via e-learning by March 2004, and 33% by
March 2005.
Meeting these targets has meant skilling up inhouse for e-learning
design and production, but Alison also praised the support of suppliers
such as Epic who she says 'provide consultancy for us to help us
get the knowledge we need.'
Key learning point: have prima facie business case!
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