Learning Experience Design in NGOs “Part 1: From Training to Learning”
As this is my first Learning Experience Design project, I have tried my best to be as clear and detailed as possible in this article, which describes an initiative I did back in 2018 in a Nepali NGO.
And to help you a bit when reading, as it might be a lot of ideas and details to digest, I have divided the content of this article in 2 sections. In the present article, “Part 1 — From Training to Learning”, I cover Research, Problem Definition and the design of Prototype 1. And in “Part 2 — From Learning to Performance” I cover the following iterations, prototypes and learnings, as well as the outcomes of the project.
Happy reading!
1. Empathy: Understanding our people and their mental models towards Learning and Development
It’s no big news that one of the key elements that inspire people at work is the opportunity to learn and grow. Especially today, in our current fast pace world, learning and development has become a “must have” for individuals and organisations alike, and everyone (like here and here) is talking about the importance of continuous learning and the need for upskilling.
One of the main findings from the research phase, was that the NGO was changing and growing fast, and this was not always reflected internally in the skills of the team, the way they collaborated, and performed to serve their customers.
More specifically in regards to learning and development, we identified the following insights and needs from the research phase:
- Growth: Based on the data gathered from the Employee Engagement Survey, we learned that 100% of the team believed that their roles and what they did on a daily basis (i.e. projects, tasks, responsibilities, etc.) was allowing them to grow their careers.
- Ownership: In despite of the above positive perception about growth, the team had a more particular view about the role that their Employer should have in their personal and professional development at the NGO. Only 4 out of 10 employees were satisfied with the training, learning resources and development opportunities provided by their Employer. And the team considered that the company should do more to provide opportunities for them to grow at work.
- Perceived Priorities: In line with the above insight, the team expressed they had “always a lot of work to do and no time for learning”. One of the reasons for this was that they work 6 out of 7 days a week, and also that the great majority didn’t see learning as integral part of their day to day job.
- Delivery Model: The way the company provided learning and development opportunities to the team was traditional and limited to classroom training only. Along with that, training was very limited due budget (external facilitators were expensive) and time constraints (too much workload).
- Experience & Frictions: One of the main frictions identified within the current learning and development experience was the “Annual Performance Review”. The team recognised that those “once in a year meetings” were not always valuable as they focused only on generic high level evaluations (“last year you exceeded / achieved / under achieved expectations) rather than being a dialogue, focused on feedback, recognition and areas for improvement.
By the end of the research phase things were getting a bit clearer. On one hand, and from a tactical point of view, we knew we needed to design a solution for the team (Employees and Managers) to overcome those frictions and allow them all to have better performance conversations. But on the other hand, and taking a more systemic and sustainable view of the problem, we knew that any upskilling effort on performance conversations or feedback skills to be successful, should be complemented, and leveraged, by a mindset change to foster a new learning culture.
In other words, and before we were to achieve any sustainable change in individual behaviours, we needed to tackle something bigger. We needed to think on how might we unlock and change the mental maps people were carrying in their heads regarding learning and performance at work. We needed for people to start shifting their mental models, mindset and beliefs so they could redirect their behaviour and performance in a day to day basis.
2. Co — creating and aligning the basics
Based on the above context and insights about our people, and especially considering that this was not only an “upskilling initiative” but more importantly a “mental model and mindset change” effort, we moved onto some ideation with the team.
And the first thing we did was to make sure everyone was aligned regarding the main priorities we wanted to tackle and also the elements that should inform our design to ensure that it was aligned to our people’s needs:
- Open to New Ways of Learning: In despite that traditional classroom training could have been seen as the most easy option to implement and upskill the team (especially considering that the client after hearing the insights of the research phase, suggested to run a 1–2 days workshop using the office training room for free), it was decided that we needed to explore and be open to find some other ways to make a long lasting change about learning. We wanted to modernise the way people learned, as well as making sure people could transfer back to their day to day jobs to perform effectively (and not just learn for the sake of learning)
- Leverage current digital habits: In despite of power cuts, and “not so reliable” internet bandwidth and speed in Nepal, we learned during research phase that the team did have a fair amount of email and social networks use, mainly to connect with friends and family; but not so much at work, so we decided to make this element relevant within the design.
- Think Big, Start Small: We knew from the research phase that the team had more than 1 skill gap and friction areas within their employee life cycle. But we decided to start only with Performance Conversations as it was identified by the team as a very important moment of truth within the employee life cycle, and also because the upcoming performance review was scheduled soon and we wanted to offer people “something” to get prepared for that.
- Time: As mentioned earlier, the team didn’t have much time to spend outside work or in classroom training, so we needed to factor elements which provided them with flexibility about when/how to learn.
- Chunking Content & Skills: Performance Conversations it’s a broad topic. And depending on who are you asking, it could involve skills such as feedback, career, development opportunities, recognition, etc. So if we wanted people to engage with our content and learn, we needed to make sure we took the time to effectively chunk and split the skills and content in a way that would be easy for people to consume it.
3. “From Training to Learning” / Prototype 1
It was already clear and agreed that we were not going to be sitting everyone in a room for 2 days and telling them everything they needed to know. All the opposite. We really wanted people to be open to something different to what they have been used to their whole life since they were kids at school.
We wanted them to become curious to the possibility of “learning differently”, and to do so, the “value of our offer” was key. And this was a big challenge for us.
“How might we support the team with great content and resources for them to learn and perform better?”
3.1. Content Curation: “ How others are doing it?”
We decided that the first step we would take to explore our new people’s learning experience, it would be the discovery of quality and relevant materials to share. As we were a bit short on budget, plus we didn’t want to do traditional classroom training, content curation was seen as an option that it could save us hours of work with targeted research for materials that other experts have already created on the topic. (Source: Personal notes from Novoed LXD Course, 2018)
For the ones new to the concept of Content Curation this is:
“An exercise to continually find, filter (group, organise), and share the most relevant content on specific topics and offer it to learners as an online tool or through a portal or platform” (Source — elearning industry)
In other words, the main objective here was to offer people a relevant selection of content and resources, using diverse channels and lengths, for them to read, watch and/or practice.
In this first prototype, we scanned and selected from the internet (and also from resources I used in my previous roles and experiences) articles from HR blogs, Videos, and Online Courses from MooCs providers, on “Performance Conversations” topics.
3.2. Content Creation: “How do we do it at this organisation?”
A good selection of resources was being curated from the Internet, but what if someone still didn’t have the time / didn’t want to review those articles, videos or MooCs? What if someone would come to us and say “If I have time to do just 1 thing, what would that be? or more importantly, how do we do it at this organisation?
To support this need of our employees, we did some backward design on the topic and tried to answer the following question: Which are the few and most important behaviours we want people to DO (not learn) when having these performance conversations?
By starting with the end in mind (a behaviour that impacts performance) and not just the process (to learn something) we were aiming to identify and highlight to the team the few most important behaviours they needed to do when preparing, during and after these conversations.
So based on the above, we decided to design a first prototype of a Performance Job Aid. For the ones new to the concept of Job Aids for learning and performance support, the following are some of their most relevant characteristics:
- They act as a repository of validated and relevant information, processes or perspectives
- Supports work and on the job activities directly
- Direct, guides and or enlightens as they provide examples on how to do it very well
The first prototype, using a very simple Powerpoint, included a brief description of the activity, why was important for them, and also, a simple set of clear steps and behaviours for them to follow if they wanted to perform effectively.
The intention of designing a Performance Job Aid was to provide a quick start guide with relevant information and steps that supports directly a work activity. Ultimately, we were aiming that a Job Aid could help employees and managers wanting to have better people experiences, in this case performance conversations, by directing and guiding them, as well as providing examples on what works well. No theory or long texts (as this was covered by the content curation element), just what’s needed to perform.
Job Aid? No theory or long texts… just what’s needed to perform
When putting together the first prototype of the Performance Job Aid we also put special attention on “making life simpler” for the learner when consuming the content. So we made sure our design was clear and direct, using simple language and action verbs, as well as presenting the information in blocks, small bits and organising it in a way that could be easy for them to digest (i.e. Muller’s Law “7+-2”)
Personal Reflection: Why I decided to use Content Curation and Content Creation?
Access & Exposure: By adding Content Curation to the Learning Design we were looking to expose the team to a more diverse and ample content, perspectives and ways to access a topic, and not just 1 view that they might would have got from a “one way classroom training”. Along with that, we aimed to expose them to the internet as a powerful tool for learning. In a way that if you took the time to do a good online search, it could be a place to access very good quality learning content, as well as access to experts, at no cost.
Alignment & Outcomes: By Creating Content, specifically a Performance Job Aid, that was sharp and to the point we were aiming to hook the learner, hopefully to reduce as much as we could distractions and focus them on what was most important. Job Aids are simple and relevant solutions to a performance friction, as they can be created in minutes, reduce the need to recall information, impact how the work is done immediately (just in time availability), hopefully aligning and minimising errors.
On Demand: Along with the above, both curated and created digital resources can be use on demand. They don’t leave people waiting for a course to be designed and offered, which could take months and is unlikely to be wholly effective to impact performance.
3.3. Push: “Learning Online Newsletter”
So we had done our first efforts on curation and creation of relevant and engaging resources. Now we needed to find a way to make this content accessible to them.
Based on the key principles we described above, we knew that whatever we decided to use to make this content accessible to the team, this should be simple to access and if we could build it over their current digital habits, even better. So we structured a bit the content and resources we had curated and created, then organised them out in a 5 weeks Content Plan, to finally give the green light to a “Learning Online Newsletter” using Mailchimp.
This first prototype of the newsletter was designed to be read / watched / practiced in no more than 45 minutes per week. And along with the selections of videos, articles and MooCs mentioned above, we included also references, questions and quotes to foster their curiosity in regards to learning, and also to reinforce the importance of themselves owning their professional development.
Personal Reflection: Why I decided to use an online newsletter?
Habits: First of all, we thought that instead of launching something completely new and “revolutionary” for the team, we could be better off embedding our solution within their habits. Or in other words, we decided “to meet them where they are”. And in this case, this was building over and complementing their current email habits, by providing a one-click option to access learning content so they could hopefully achieve behavioural change.
Digital: If we wanted to take some steps to modernise the learning culture of the NGO, having a digital channel to reach the team, played really nicely with this objective and became a must have.
Analytics: The online newsletter provided me with very useful analytics to learn more about employees preferences on content, channels and engagement, which later informed decision making and improved following iterations and newsletters.
Free & Easy: Mailchimp was free of cost and very easy to use. It was my first time using the tool and I learned how to use it in just a few days.
4. Learnings from Prototype 1
So at this point in time, we had 5 weeks to finish the project, and the first newsletter prototype was now with the team. To be very honest, and as this was the first time the team experienced learning in other way than classroom training, I can say that the numbers we got were a bit low, but promising:
Along with the Open Rate figures, we also learned that:
- Resources placed at the top of the email were clicked a lot more than the ones at the bottom (12% vs 3.2%),
- Video was their preferred channel (specially the ones about new ways of learning),
- Job Aids “were ok, they are a good idea, but they could do better with some content trimming”
Data Analytics + Feedback = Improved Decision Making
To complement the “hard data analytics” that Mailchimp was offering me, I had also some conversations with the team to understand more about their experience with the first newsletter, and what I found out was something that completely changed the future of the solution. Not the design of the newsletter or content of it, but more about the system in which the newsletter and initiative was embedded.
When shall I learn? Before or After work? Weekends? I am allowed to learn at work?
I learned from this feedback that in despite that they liked the idea of receiving in their inbox a selection of relevant content to learn more (What?), and that they were also starting to understand in more depth the need to upskill themselves (Why?), they also shared with me that the initiative could do a bit better explaining when and how they were supposed to review the content and resources provided.
In summary, Part 1 of this article was all about understanding the mental models, assumptions and needs our users had regarding their own learning and development; as well as defining and agreeing the basic design principles that aimed to achieve more than “just a classroom training” solution. With all this, we managed to give an important first step on moving “From Training to Learning”, by putting in front of them a first prototype of a solution that could potentially become an enabler of a learning and performance culture transformation.
Do you want to know more about the following iterations, prototypes and outcomes of the project?
To access the second part of this article please click here “Part 2 — From Learning to Performance”
