My WIIFM Story

One mistake that is often made within organisations who design their eLearning is with WIIFM. WIIFM stands for "what's in it for me?" (said from the perspective of the learner). This attempts to address the motivation for the learner to proceed and ultimately complete their training. The mistake comes when the WIIFM is written from the perspective of the organisation and not truly what motivates employees.

Here is an example that I experienced when I was working at the Toronto international airport. Consulting with my stakeholder and subject matter experts the motivation for a course on safety was for the thousands of passengers that visit Toronto's international airport and with an emphasis on the reputation of the airport as a safe place.

Upon further reflection I started to think about the employees who were going to be required to complete this course and realized that while we all want to be safe, an employees concern is not toward the reputation of the airport or to the thousands of strangers who pass through the airport daily, but instead for themselves, their families and friends (their loved ones).

It took some convincing, but my stakeholder agreed that reminding employees that their loved ones at some point will be passengers at the airport and their safety is what is ultimately important to employees. Also, concern for their own safety can be used in this instance as well. Everyone, including the families of employees, wants them to come home safe at the end of their shift. I managed to extend that even further to include their co-workers as well. Many co-workers become friends outside of work. We share in each other's lives and their families become our families.

Try to avoid towing the corporate line when writing your course motivation section of your eLearning. It becomes far more effective when it has real meaning to the employees and not some check mark on a corporate checklist.  

What Is The True Cost of Training?

Jean Ventose was doing some shopping at his local Walmart store in Calgary and had picked up a set of headphones from the electronics department. As he continued shopping he noticed that a store employee was following him and not at a discrete distance like you might expect, but rather in a manner that could be construed as a way to harass him. The employee wore a security uniform. It was at this point that Ventose decided to take out his smartphone and begin recording the incident. Here is his video directly from his Facebook page.

Jean Ventose's video from his Facebook page

My guess is that Walmart Canada is now in crisis mode, scrambling to come up with solutions to the public relations nightmare that has already begun. Hundreds of thousands have already viewed and commented on this video from across the country. All the major news agencies have covered this story and it has brought the kind of attention on Walmart Canada that I'm sure they didn't want. I suspect that many regular Walmart customers may end up buying their merchandise elsewhere this week. The cost to Walmart Canada could easily be in the millions of dollars. 

It would be easy to suggest a training program that would include learning in the areas of preventing discrimination, harassment, creating a respectful workplace, customer service and so on. This would certainly be the week to propose to the higher ups that more and better training is required. Unfortunately, your proposal for such training typically happens when things are going well for your company and there isn't a crisis that needs to be addressed. My advice is to share this story now with the persons in your organization responsible for approving the additional budget for training so that you can remind them what the true cost of training really is. 

And don't forget, I have designed training for large corporations that would address all the issues that this video has demonstrated and I am available to hire to design similar learning solutions for your organization as well.