Blending your overall approach

In exploring the field of training one guiding principle seems to shine out. No single solution is perfect. You will need a combination of different traditional and digital strategies if you want to improve your levels of performance and knowledge.

In the modern knowledge era, digital learning is providing more sophisticated ways for people to share and learn together. However, digital technology only works when supported by outstanding design, technical back-up and human support. As highlighted in several industry studies, the digital learning revolution has hardly begun. Statistics on the number of people who are currently undertaking e-learning shows this to be still well under 10 per cent. The vast majority of those connected to the Internet are opting for e-mail, chat lines and information retrieval rather than choosing web courses and collaboration capabilities. As you can see, it is still early days.

Conversely, if a business feels they can survive purely on the merits of technology they will struggle to gain competitive advantage. The Massie Center in the USA conducted a survey of 2119 people from all over the globe. Eighty-eight per cent of learners and 91 per cent of managers wanted a trainer assigned to their e-learning experience. Sixty-two per cent of learners and 63 per cent of managers would be more likely to select an e-learning class if a trainer were part of the package, either via e-mail or threaded discussion. Simply put, people want skilled human beings to answer questions and provide emotional support, not just the technology.

In saying this, accept that a blended approach is most likely more expensive and you may well lose some of your cost savings from rolling out digital technology. However, a well-co-ordinated and blended approach will pay off with greater learning and business improvement in the long run. As the director of TPI, Ronnie Stronge, says, our challenge is how to bring all the elements together in the best combination.

Finally, look for short bursts of stimulating and relevant training. Short duration face-to-face classes and interesting discussions combined with pre-class and post-class learning guides is a more common model now being deployed in better practice case studies. Most important of all, seek to create a spirit of buzz in the learning with a host of different ways to stimulate interest and collaboration. Here again the sky is the limit, whether it is creating a competition, working on a joint puzzle on the Internet or designing a knowledge sharing experience, extract whatever it takes to polish your training performance.