Leadership matters, and the direct involvement of top managers in learning has a major impact on the success of learning. This is clearly demonstrated in this case study from Hammonds Furniture; a progressive and expanding company with a high quality product.

The technology they have implemented is very simple, essentially podcasts delivered to mobile devices supported by workbooks and face-to-face mentoring sessions. The result: Increase in sales volume of 24% (for comparable quarters); average order size increase of 14%; growth in gross margin of 3%.

These improvements happened in those areas where the learning was implemented and was one of the factors contributing to a significant business impact.  The key ingredient in this success is the face-to-face mentoring which started with the Chief Executive mentoring his Directors through the learning material and they mentored all the staff involved. Learners presented what they had learnt back to the Directors and the CEO; the CEO was an enthusiastic user of the material frequently listening to the podcasts as he drove from location to location in his Aston Martin.

The Towards Maturity research in 2008 revealed that organisations where Directors are users of e-learning rate e-learning’s Business Impact at 57% and the impact on Staff at 65%, where Directors have no involvement in e-learning this drops to 43% and 53%.

Leadership matters.

This case study was contributed by Enterprise Leaders where you can find out more about the technology. 

Although the E-FLI story may be a little different to most other elearning content stories, there's plenty to be learned from it. It's perhaps even more interesting because it was made outside of
the bounds of the established elearning industry, and so was created without any
preconceptions.

At the age of 24, Holly Budge was already an experienced skydiver, and was working in New Zealand as a free-fall camera woman, when she spotted a gap in the market for skydiving training.

This case study shows how Holly developed an award winning programme that delivered results to a demanding community.

Evidence for Change

This case study has been included in Towards Maturity's Evidence for Change programme because for those schools adopting the programme, they have found:

• Students are spending less time on the ground and more time in the air which has increased the schools revenues ( students pay per jump)
• Reduced time to competence as students are better prepared in the classroom
• Improved practice has resulted in greater activity and fewer accidents.

It also highlights how e-learning can also be used to support difficult topics!

E-FLI's Top Tips for developing e-learning for tricky topics!

• It’s certainly easier to change things when planning, but it's important to be flexible and
  continue to make improvements even after the programme is built.
• One person can't be the expert at everything, so surround yourself with people who are
  experts and collaborate with them.
• Give everyone the chance to help in shaping things. If you’re working with multimedia
  developers, remember you hired them for their skills, so don’t just get them to build to order,
  get their input.
• Get more informal feedback earlier on. You may have a vision of what you’re setting out to
  produce, but taking the time to understand what people really need and how they will use it
  can save a lot of time in the long run
• Be hands on in the production phase, because that's where the vision becomes reality.

Darrell Minards has been with Xerox for over 20 years and 4 years ago he was appointed Head of Learning & Development for Xerox in Europe. He wanted to re-engineer learning and development so that it would be seen as a thought-leader and a key business enabler. This case study provides insight into how Darrell and his team have changed L&D in Xerox forever.

With responsibility for L&D across Europe with different cultures, languages and learning experiences Darrell adopted the mantra of ‘Develop Once, Deliver Many Times’ for all his target markets. His strategy really embraces two major elements – the skills of their people and their performance.

We are pleased to include this case study in our evidence for change programme.

The true testimony of success is being able to measure and quantify the business benefits that have resulted from re-engineering L&D @ Xerox Europe. Here are some of the key achievements:

• Cost savings in excess of £5 million.
• Over 300 virtual classrooms were delivered through 2009 to over 3,500 delegates across all business groups.
• The new induction programme has resulted in the best prepared inductees.
• Managers are now truly engaged and L&D include a Managers pack in inductions. Historically the rating for L&D averaged 3.2 out of a possible score of 5 – now its 4.1 based on their new programme.
• They are setting and managing expectations successfully.
• They have increased efficiency, management engagement and coaching and achieved a faster time to performance.

But perhaps the greatest testament to the work of Darrell and his team is that now L&D is seen as a key enabler to business performance. They are now seen as an innovative team and Darrell is being rewarded for creating an environment in which individuals feel that they can take risks, make mistakes and learn from them for the benefit of everyone.

Top 10 Tips from this case study for re-engineering Learning & Development are:

1. Challenge pre-conceptions and past ways of doing things
2. Adopt a performance consulting approach to identify the core problem and agree the most appropriate solution
3. Secure commitment, engagement and participation from key stakeholders
4. Harness learning technologies to optimise available time and reduce costs
5. Be creative and innovative
6. Demonstrate business impact and measure contribution
7. Align the learning solution (where appropriate) to key business needs and objectives and be seen as a ‘key enabler’
8. Identify key ‘champions’ and agents of change within L&D
9. Be strong and have faith in your team
10. Don’t be afraid to make the changes needed for the ultimate benefit of the organisation, L&D and the individuals.

'We need a robust evidence base to support change'

Following consultation with a wide range of experts in learning and development over the last year, Becta committed to support organisations by developing a robust evidence base of efficiency gains that can be achieved by using technology effectively in the workplace.

Organisations are under increasing pressure to up-skill employees faster and improve business agility but with fewer resources than ever before. In addition, business priorities are constantly changing, further increasing the pressure on hard stretched learning and development professionals.

Research shows that many organisations are looking beyond the traditional use of technology to deliver compliance training and considering how learning technologies can be used to redefine how learning can support business priorities. However, many remain sceptical about the benefits.

If technology is used appropriately in learning, can it help organisations to survive, become more agile and efficient and thrive as we come through the recession? Some would say yes but, until now, good evidence of its impact has been scattered and difficult to come by.

The absence of independent facts and figures means that many who want to consider new approaches to meeting business needs are at risk of making decisions without a firm foundation on which to build their business case. As a result, many implementations are driven by technology rather than business need, resulting in poor engagement, a bad experience and a lost opportunity.

Consolidating the evidence

This publication sets out to bring together recent evidence of the efficiencies brought about by the use of technology to support learning and development in the workplace.

The aims of this work, conducted in support of Becta's Next Generation Learning in the workplace are:

• to consolidate evidence of the impact of learning technologies to inspire those looking to support changing business needs
• to provide independent value propositions to help those looking to demonstrate value in order to engage their organisation more fully

The study identified where learning technologies were adding business value and reports findings in 8 themes:

1. Time Saving
2. Productivity Gains
3. Staff Benefit
4. Business Impact
5. Tangible quality improvement for learning
6. Impact of Social Learning
7. Green Issues
8. Cost Savings

The links to all 50 case studies are included in the appendix for those who want to dig deeper!

The report was prepared by an independent research team, led by Towards Maturity Enterprises and involving the Institute of Work Based Learning together with a number of respected industry analysts who reviewed over 180 articles and reports and 48 case studies in a search for tangible evidence of workplace success.

 You can download the report below (please log in) or visit Becta directly.

But how much of that is realling influencing the way that leanring and development is delivered on the ground?

This is a question that we review biannually via the Towards Maturity UK learning technology benchmarks - what's actually being used, what are the barriers , what's delivering results and why? So we were interested to see how our findings in the UK compared with those from the US.

What's old is new again -  ASTD Jan 2010

The Alison Rossett and James Marshal ( from the American Society of Training and Development) published research conducted last year with  900+ organisations to look at how e-learning is actually being used in L&D. We were pleased to see that their definition of e-Learning was as broad as ours and they investigated the extent to which technology in its widest sense was being used to support the learning process. They identified 26 scenarios in which learning could be e-nabled and then asked the participants the frequency of their adoption - a slightly different approach to our benchmarks (& one that we really liked) but close enough for us to make some interesting comparisons*:

How does our current use of technology compare?

The ASTD study found that 'e-Learning is mostly about measuring and delivering through familiar instructional strategies such as tutorials and scenarios'  and that the most frequent e-learning activity was the testing of skills and knowledge.

They also found that mobile learning and the opportunity for learners to collaborate ( either via discussion boards or via new social media) was rare.

Most of these findings mirrored ours (gathered from organisations in the UK 8 months earlier - See Driving Business Benefits for details) where we found that 80%+ of all our participants were using electronic based learning content and surveys/assessments and these have become the staple over the last few years. However very few  UK companies were using mobile learning (in fact this had dropped from 21% to 7%).

In the UK, we did see that the use of virtual classroom  as having grown considerably ( in use by 45% of the sample & plans for futher growth)  and over 25% of UK participants were offering e-tutor support. and 40% were offering online collaboration between learners -  however, both of these practices were amongst the least frequently used practices in the US study.

What about our future plans?

Like ours, the US study showed that participants were planning a really wide range of e-enabled learning activities for the future - not one stands out more than the other. 

In the UK, we found that mobile learning had the highest growth prediction for  and this was in the top 4 aspriations in the US.  Other shared aspirations included more measurement of learning and an increase in learner collaboration and sharing.

How do our barriers compare?

The UK benchmark was taken at the start of the recession, the US survey in the middle of it - perhaps that might account for the the fact that 'lack of financial resources' was the number 1 barrier in the US (at the time it was the 4th barrier for UK practitioners). Staff reluctance was the number 1 constraint in the UK and featured twice in various forms in the US top 5 - we face the same challenges around managing change around the globe!

The ASTD authors were surprised that the lack supporting ICT infrastructure & staff IT skills did not feature more highly as a barrier. Infrastructure was one of the most significant barriers for the UK when we did our benchmark in 2007 and had dropped to 5th by our 2009 study. In the UK the lack of ICT skills had also dropped as a barrier and was only cited by 22% of our sample.

The lack of L&D skills to implement and manage new ways of learning was amongst the UKs top 3 and didn't appear in the US study - maybe it wasn't asked or maybe their skills are much higher - we would love to know!

Our conclusions

Josh Bersin reported on some of his recent UK findings looking at the training market at Learning Technologies 2010 this year and commented that the US is twice as likely to deliver learning through online methods (this study was conducted with Training Zone and you can read more here), with an implication that we might be one step behind our US counterparts.

A the time, several of us wondered if this story was a true reflection of what was happening in the UK vs the US.

One of the concerns with the Bersin results was that the question about learning delivery was embedded within a wider survey around training trends and didn't dig deep into how the technologies were actually being adopted. By necessity, he could only look at what was being used rather than how it was being used.By comparing the ASTD results with our own benchmarks (both of which dig into the how) we can shine a little more light on the matter.

Traditional e-learning content and assessment is much more likely to be the core e-learning offering at present in the US and the UK. We agree (with Bersin) that more US companies probably use these methods than UK counterparts given the geography of the country and the concerns around proving that they have delivered consistent compliance training. (The fact that the ASTD authors commented on the lawyers as a factor in their thinking also highlights the legal importance of proving compliance as a driver over there.)

However on the big discussion topics of the day ( mobile, social learning etc) it doesn't look as though the US are as far ahead as some might have us believe.  In fact, our application of technology to support collaboration, mentoring and delivery of programmes using virtual classroom may be more embedded over here.

The big 'trend spotters and gurus' are right to highlight where technology can support learning and performance next. It is important that we keep our eye on these opportunities and current economic restrictions may even accellerate our innovation.

However on both sides of the atlantic it is clear that neither are necesarily 'leading the race' we are all making steady progress with our e-learning journeys  - one step at a time- and the more we can learn from each other the better!

For more information on ASTD in the UK and to join the UK network please e-mail neville@thelearningsanctuary.co.uk

* we appreciate that not all of the participants in the ASTD survey are necessarily from the US, in the same way that not all participants in our benchmark are from the UK but given the geographical base of the 2 organisations, we felt is safe to make these comparisons!

The journal has been created to address the paucity of research publication avenues looking at workplace and organisational e-learning issues and this first issue.

The first issue addresses the theme of "Current issues and future directions in workplace e-learning: Mapping the research landscape", All 14 articles in this ediction are freely available any member of the general public who registers for a free account on the journal's Web site.

We are very pleased that the Toward's Maturity's benchmark work on e-learning maturity in the workplace was accepted, following a nerve wracking blind review process! You can download the Towards Maturity article that was published in the journal below.

 There is a wealth of material in this first edition from those we know well in Europe ( such as Richard Straub and Martyn Sloman) and from further afielid. The articles provide very useful insights into a  important areas such as executive evaluation of e-learning and it's use in enaging small business as well as the learning developments acompanying the rapid collaborative changes that we are seeing in business at the moment.

 The full list of refereed articles included in the first edition are:

• Knowledge work in a connected world: is workplace learning the next big thing? 
• Learning and technology – what have we learnt? 
• Whose context is it anyway? Workplace e-learning as a synthesis of designer- and learner-generated contexts
• Heutagogy and e-learning in the workplace: some challenges and opportunities
• Connectivism: a theory for learning in a world of growing complexity
• Exploring corporate e-learning research: what are the opportunities?
• Enhancing the experience of e-learning among working students: a systematic review with thematic analysis
• The use of e-learning in the workplace: a systematic literature review 
• E-learning maturity in the workplace – the benefits and practices 
• Optimising work-based e-learning in small and medium-sized enterprises: contemporary challenges
• The Learn@Work Socrates-Minerva Research Project 2005–2007: what did it do and what has happened with it since?
• Workers researching the workplace using a work-based learning framework: towards an agenda for improving supervisory Practice 
• How do executives evaluate e-learning? A grounded theory study

We'd recommend that you take advantage of the fact that the first edition is free and take a closer look!

New PFAS come from a variety of backgrounds, from experienced Financial and Banking Advisors to Milkmen and Personal Assistants, and it was important to start catering for all of their different learning needs. In order to gain qualified and competent PFAs at the end of the induction they began the ‘Destination PFA’ initiative where the key to success would be training knowledge and skills as separate entities.

From the shortlisted e-learning awards submission in the category of ‘Best online or distance learning programme 2009’, this complimentary case study provides further insight on the Podcast recently recorded with Mark Shelmerdine at Lloyds Banking Group in December 2009 and published on the Towards Maturity website. In that Podcast Mark describes how they identified the need, how they established the key criteria for developing the programme, the 6 topic areas that comprise their blended learning solution and finally the benefits that have resulted.

They identified 5 key objectives for their new Destination PFA programme:

1. Provide a programme that could be tailored to an individual’s needs, allowing delegates to learn at their own pace.
2. Allow delegates to learn wherever and whenever was best for them.
3. Provide skills and knowledge that could be easily applied in the real world.
4. Design the entire programme in-house to allow for quick and easy updates.
5. Provide cost savings.

In less than a year Destination PFA has saved direct costs in the region of £500,000, and that doesn't include the benefits of increased staff morale, lower staff turnover and higher productivity.

In the Podcast, Mark provides the following tips for others who may be facing a similar challenge:

• Speak to past users to understand their experiences.
• Spend time on understanding the skills and knowledge that's required to do the job and what's needed.
• Explore what's available in terms of technology and tools and consider what could be used.
• Don't be restricted in your thinking or approach.

Within the year, this blended learning programme @ Lloyds Banking Group has delivered:

• Improved staff morale
• Lower staff turnover
• Saving £500,000 direct costs

Destination PFA set out to achieve a number of key goals which have all have been met, laying the foundations for expanding the concept of this blended learning programme into other areas. In fact Lloyds Banking Group have now developed a comparable programme for Mortgage Advisors in half the time based on their experience as Mark reveals in the Podcast.

In the 11 months since launch in September 2008, the use of e-Learning has soared to 71% of their population of approx 65,000 employees with 228,380 e-learning modules now completed which is an average of 3.5 per store employee.

“eLearning is universally loved by our people in stores.”
Alex Gourlay, Chief Executive of the Health and Beauty Division, Alliance Boots

The challenges they faced were considerable when you consider:

• Over 2,600 stores and around 65,000 employees, with many varying work patterns
• Training needed to be:
  o Consistent, sustainable and quickly deployable
  o Delivered efficiently to maximize customer facing time
  o Of high quality but delivered at low cost
• Increased demand from the business to demonstrate return on Learning and Development (L&D) investment
• The employee engagement survey indicated that training was consistently falling short of employee’s expectations

It was evident Boots needed a new approach to L&D and to meet these challenges, Boots decided to invest in an e-Learning infrastructure that would allow stores to access online training content.

Boots developed a unique brand for e-learning called 'Log-on and Learn' and they have overcome technology, accessibility and cultural obstacles to deliver a programme that has had a profound impact on business performance.

Evidence for Change 

We are pleased to include this story in our Evidence for Change programme. In this case study you'll learn how Boots achieved improvements in:

Sales performance:

• Cosmetics – the top 10% of stores completing e-learning show a significant increase in sales compared to the average;
• Electrical Beauty – the top 10% of stores completing Electrical Beauty e-learning also show a significant increase in sales compared to the average;
• Travel Insurance – stores completing e-learning show a 100% increase in sales over those that have not;
• There has been a tangible improvement in the sales of vitamins just three weeks after the launch of a vitamin basic module.

Customer Care - in the period Oct 08-Mar 09, the top 10% highest engaged stores show a 3 percentage point increase in their score compared to the average score in that period.

Impact on Great Place to Work Score - When considering the question ‘I have the training I need to do a great job’, the top 10% highest engaged stores show a 5 percentage point increase compared to the average score for the question.

Efficiency Savings - e-Learning has been used to support 3 key HR projects:

• Performance Leadership
• Employee Offer
• Recruitment Transformation

 10 top tips to take away

Terrific results and here are the top 10 hints & tips that you can learn from this story:

1. Don't be constrained by history and past training preferences
2. Respect the diversity of your audience and understand their needs
3. Secure senior management commitment and buy-in
4. Balance high quality with low costs
5. Align learning to key organisation values and goals
6. Undertake a 'pilot' to demonstrate success and identify key obstacles and likely resistance
7. Develop and implement a plan to overcome obstacles and resistance
8. Establish a strong brand and communications strategy for e-learning in the organisation
9. Establish 'e-learning champions' in 'local' stores (locations)
10. Demonstrate value and benefits to the organisation in terms of improved business performance, increased sales, staff satisfaction and customer care.

 Download the full case study below and don't forget to login or register first.

The Get Up To Speed onboarding portal helps Sky’s large volume of new contact centre staff deliver excellent customer service to its nearly 10 million customers by building product and company knowledge in a fun way before they start work. It particularly appeals tothe company’s large number of Generation Y recruits by using social networking (including blogs to connect staff to new recruits) and interactive games. The online portal also uses a video belt and simulated customer scenarios, as well as incentive mechanisms to encourage repeated completion through a real-time leader-board.

We are pleased to incude this great initative in our Evidence for Change programme.

Sky's business challenge: Accelerate time to target performance for contact centre staff

Sky has a commitment to deliver engaging and entertaining experiences to their customers. In an economic climate where customer service is a real differentiator Sky recognised the potential impact for a successful pre-joining programme. With new recruits often underprepared, an induction period too long and attrition too high, the business case was clear. Brightwave developed the innovative ‘Get Up To Speed’ onboarding internet portal which accelerates time to target performance for all new Sky contact centre staff helping them to build knowledge before their start date.

As a result:

• Retention has doubled
• £700K saving
• 25% acceleration in time to target performance
• 11% increase in sales conversions in week one for new starters

You can find out more about this story here.

Care Management Group is the winner of ‘The best e-learning project securing widespread adoption’ at the elearning Awards 2009, this compelling case study describes how they have successfully implemented 'Fullfilling potential' in their care-focused business.

The enthusiastic and widespread adoption of e-learning has transformed training provision and is delivering value across the entire business. The extent to which learning technologies have been adopted by this organisation is all the more remarkable when you consider the working environment.

Evidence for change

We are pleased to include Care Managemetn Group in our Evidence for Change programme
as Fulfilling Potential has shown how e-learning can be enthusiastically adopted within a people-focused working environment, and can rapidly deliver significant business impact.

Costs of both staff training and covering staff whilst training have been cut considerably, realizing large savings for the company as a whole. The evidence speaks for itself:

• Fulfilling Potential has cut costs by approximately 90%, and is already saving CMG over £300,000 per year (from the initial 6 modules alone)
• The comparative cost of training for a single course has reduced by approximately £57,000 per module
• The huge impact on staff can be seen by the fact that ‘Fulfilling Potential’ is on target to achieve 100% completion of all modules

This adoption of e-learning is delivering business benefits by improving efficiency, reducing costs, reducing risk and improving service quality. We hope it will help you build your case for business change!

You can download the full story below for details on how they achieved such great results in their first foray into using learning technologies. In the meantime, here are some hints and tips from their journey that we hope you will find useful!

Hints and Tips for getting it right first time
 

• Realise that initial implementation will be a challenge
• Think carefully about the kind of people you are expecting to use the new technology
• Make sure that an accurate audit of current provision is undertaken
• In depth and on-going consultation with stakeholders is vital
• Integrate the new system around existing work patterns
• The infrastructure needs to be solidly in place before implementation
• Create an efficient communications plan that will reach every part of the target workforce
• Set and manage expectations in line with corporate identity and philosophy
• Efficient feedback methods are required throughout the process
• A partner with plenty of experience always helps!