Singapore, 22 October 2003

e-Learning: Bridging the Apathy Gap

Evangelists and Customers

You are a convert to e-learning aren't you? An evangelist for its power and a true believer that not only is learning fun it can also be 'sexy'. If you didn't feel this way why would you be suggesting to your bosses that the company invest hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pounds, dollars or Euros in setting up an e-learning programme?

On the surface it seems pretty straight forward, IT provides the bandwidth, the e-learning providers get your launch programmes on-line, you send out an e-mail, conduct a few seminars for department heads, even put some posters up. What's left to do? Just sit back and wait for the customers to come of course. But they don't. Then reality dawns, learning simply isn't sexy or fun outside your own project team and unless pushed very hard and given an appropriate context it hardly seems relevant to the majority of employees.

Sure, there will always been those users who, either through inclination or ambition, embrace it, but the promise of e-learning has always been 'more learning for less'. The point is that you have embarked upon this course to broaden the appeal of and therefore the personal and organizational benefit that learning can deliver, whilst still achieving cost savings. You are at a very high risk of failing against these objectives unless you accept the disciplines of change management and the role that communication plays when it comes to making e-learning deliver.

Senior Managers and the Average Jo

Certainly we can all take some comfort in the fact that our post industrial society is waking up to the fact that helping individuals realize their potential is not just a good way of recruiting, retaining and motivating the best people around, it is likely to be the differentiating factor in the competitive strength of a corporation. Great theory, undoubtedly true and music to the ears of Learning and Development departments, and this is exactly where the problem lies.

In the white heat of new learning technology everyone seems to forget that to the average Jo who does the real work, learning is still a low priority. So, we have a big perception gap - an often apathetic target audience for whom training is perceived as more of a burden than a liberation and a small group of senior corporate managers who see it as a holy grail.

Learner Attitudes

Herewith a few examples of the sort of attitudes towards e-learning 'real' people have that should be reflected in your communication messages - these are quotes from focus groups we have conducted and around which campaigns/messages can be formed, they may not be universally applicable therefore, but hold some common truths;

Reasons not to:

  • "I'm doing OK anyway"
  • "Too busy - can hardly get my work done let alone find time for learning"
  • "When I finish work the last thing I want is some boring learning course"
  • "My line manager makes enough of a fuss when I read an industry mag let alone learning"
  • "Its not 'cool'"
  • "Puts a burden on my colleagues to take up my work-load"
  • "It's more work for no more money - typical of management"
  • "latest management buzz word"

Reasons in favour:

  • "good for my career, it improves my marketability"
  • "makes meeting the personal development bit of my quarterly review easy"
  • "good to step away from the routine for an hour or two a week"
  • "it's free and it's easy"
  • "being able to do it 15 minute chunks is the best bit"

Areas of concern:

  • "best bit of learning is learning with others, e-learning doesn't let this happen"
  • "Your get a lot of learning through anecdotes of others this will be all theory and text"
  • "You need to be very self motivated, I'm not"
  • "Sounds complicated"
  • "I used to really look forward to the 2 day residential - got me away from the kids"

None of the above answers are surprising, and there are of course many more so one would imagine that developing a communications plan and messages that tackle these issues should be fairly straightforward. Well it is, but why then do internal comms teams often do little more than produce is a dry list of courses that don't talk about what the benefit is to the individual.

Consumer focused communications

The communication challenge lies firstly in reaching agreement at senior management level that innovative or at least benefit led and 'consumer' focused communications methods are vital to bridge this perception gap and, secondly that it is only by taking a very consistent and integrated approach in changing attitudes and approaches towards learning can deliver the results you want.

It's not that no-one tackles the e-learning communication issue with such imagination, it's just that it's very rare and that such activity tends to be limited to short lived initiatives centred round the launch phase which simply isn't enough. Such limited activity is simply being tasked with solving too many deeply ingrained attitudes, likely to include traces of indifference/apathy/cynicism when it comes to learning (if these characteristics weren't there why would an innovative idea be needed in the first place?).

The most forward-looking corporations (and those who have already seen their e-learning pilot programmes fail or be compromised) have gone back to basics when it comes to the launch and on-going promotion of e-learning. They realise that to affect the changes in attitude necessary that they need to approach their target audience as intelligent consumers rather than a block of employees.

It's a big mental step and organisationally can lead to quite a few conflicts - it demands quite a few home truths being told/accepted about the poverty of imagination and lack of 'consumer' focus when it comes to internal communications in general and learning in particular.

If at this point you are protesting violently at such a generalisation, take a look at your company newsletter/magazine and ask yourself how many of your colleagues would actually pay money for it? Not Many? The reasons are obvious. The subject matter describes rather than inspires and the headlines are about as far from promising a compelling read as it's possible to get. In short the editors and contributors have not written with an audience of 'real' people in mind, do not really talk about their issues, concerns and news and hence do not engage them.

So far we have talked almost exclusively about the agenda as it concerns the end user. The communications agenda extends beyond the simple promotion of e-learning programmes to prospective participants however, it also needs to convert the HR teams, Line Managers and Top Management. The compelling presentation material and documentary proof that e-learning represents a highly relevant and very valuable contribution to the achievement of corporate strategy is vital. These groups may contain a high proportion of cynics resistant for any number of reasons to the concept of e-learning and you rely on their support, particularly when things aren't going so well, to ensure long-term funding.

Communication itself is of course itself only part of the picture. The imperatives behind learning in general and e-learning in particular must also be woven into the fabric of the organisation. Some learning should be a mandatory requirement built into review procedures, even non-mandatory aspects of personal development should play a role in quarterly or annual reviews and through such mechanisms we provide both the pull and the push factors that are more likely to result in a high uptake by employees of a new way of learning. Of course we aren't going to convert every die hard anti-learner but we are likely to convert a higher proportion of our marginal/middle audience and it is on this audience that the battle ground of cost benefit is won and on which the personal glory of you the reader will rely.

Reprinted by courtesy of e-LearningGuru.com

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PurpleTrain.com
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