As long as I’ve been in the IT Training industry, on-demand (or eLearning) training content has been available. When I first started out, we used to ship the content out via a floppy disk (I’ve included a descriptive link for those with less life experience than I have ????). We would post these out to clients who were not able to attend a training course in person for any reason.
It’s safe to say that we’ve really moved on in terms of the content, what’s delivered, how it’s delivered and how it’s managed - and it’s all very exciting! On-demand learning is the most cost-effective training solution on the face of it. However, it does throw up challenges: Given everyone’s workload, how do companies make sure that the on-demand training their staff need is completed? What happens when people have completed the learning before (or after) the timescales requires? I thought I’d share my thoughts on “quick wins” and “food for thought”.
- What are people being trained on? How long will the course last? Is it "in-depth" technically speaking or is it light touch? If the course is less than a couple of hours in duration, most people will make the time to sit through a digital learning course. This also applies if the message isn’t too in-depth. Get Started with the Now Platform is a great example of this.
- Communicate clearly what the expectation is to those people nominated for on demand training and what the implications are if it doesn’t happen. I know this sounds very basic, but you’d be surprised the number of times this gets missed!
- If you implement an on demand training approach, block out time in peoples’ calendars to enable them to complete training. It worked really well when (pre-Covid) people would congregate in a meeting room and go through it all together. It’s like the gym buddy mentality - if it’s up to one person, then it will likely get pushed aside for something of a “higher priority”. However, if your buddy is going, you’re less likely to be a no-show. Now, groups of people set up virtual meetings and do it that way.
- Deadlines are key. If you set the training up too early in the program, it will get forgotten. There needs to be a sense of urgency to complete. This helps people prioritise the training. On the flip side, if you leave the training until too late then it doesn’t set people up for success. 4 – 6 weeks seems to work well, based on previous experience. On the flip side, if you are enabling process users on your new system, 4 – 6 weeks is probably too far in advance. This audience benefits a huge amount from the “just-enough-and-just-in-time” approach
- Ask for regular updates on the progress of the individuals so that if people start falling behind with their learning plans it can be picked up much quicker. This will save a lot of time, pain (and potentially money) in the long run. The new functionality in Now Learning 2.0 coming soon in 2022 will enable you to run this quickly and easily
- Ask the Training Account TeamTrainingAE@servicenow.com if things aren’t going quite according to plan. There are a few simple steps that can be taken to get people back on track if needed. We are here to help and are happy to do so.
The above are some of my experiences supporting clients from small, focused training plans, through to large-scale digital transformation programs. I’d appreciate your views; what else have you seen work well? Have you ever had to implement a Plan B?
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