When Training Won t Work - The Case For Electronic Performance Support

Could it be that the world’s moving too fast for training? Your job, perhaps even your career, changes every year or so. The products and services that your organization delivers change monthly. The whole basis of the industry in which you work may be challenged every few years. There’s so much to know and so little time to learn it. Maybe the answer is not training, certainly as we know it, but top quality information and performance support materials, accessible on demand, when required, electronically. In this chapter, I argue the case for EPSS (Electronic Performance Support Systems) as an important ingredient in a training and knowledge management strategy, but warn that getting it right is not as easy as it may seem.

The only constant is change

There was a time, or so we’re always told, when life was more sedate. When you left school or college, you would learn your trade safe in the knowledge that your skills would serve you for a lifetime of stable employment, in an organization whose products and services changed moderately only every decade or so. Even the trains ran on time (on second thoughts, that’s probably overstating it).

Whether this was ever true, it certainly isn’t now, as we can all attest. If we’re employed at all, rather than being self-employed, on contract or just resting, then we know the situation can change at any time. If we don’t keep up-to-the-minute with our chosen field then we soon become worthless. At the same time, products and services are constantly being adapted to meet ever-changing customer needs, competitive pressures and market opportunities. At companies like Cisco, new products are launched every week. To compound the pressures upon us, we’re bombarded with information by post, email and mobile phone, some of it critical, most of it superfluous. So how do we cope with this unprecedented learning challenge? Well let’s take an example and check out the options.