Freelance Series — Keeping the Cost of Training Low

One of the biggest challenges a training department has is justifying its existence. In most cases, learning and development only show up on the expense side of the balance sheet. So how do we justify our existence to the powers that be? Here are several strategies that you can include in training to keep the cost low and justify the existence of learning and development to the decision-makers in your organization.

Avoid expensive technology for technology’s sake

Virtual Reality Goggles may be an unnecessary expense

I had an experience a number of years ago with an organization that hired me for consultation. They were really excited about Adobe Captivate’s new virtual reality solution. The designer who wanted to use this new technology was more interested in the technology but didn’t consider if virtual reality lent itself to this situation. The organization purchased several virtual reality headsets for the learners to use when completing this course. This expense wasn’t needed and many in the organization were left wondering why this equipment was purchased.

Don’t reinvent the learning wheel

Some of the requests I get from new or less experienced eLearning developers look something like this…

My eLearning project is due on Monday morning and I promised this really cool interaction that I just can’t figure out. Can you help me get this completed on Sunday evening?

Of course, I help as many people in this situation as I can but I learned much earlier in my career to build what I call an eLearning utility belt. Remember how amazing Batman was at pulling out just what he needed at the moment to solve just about any crime-fighting challenge.

eLearning Superheroes

I spend a certain amount of my week working on new learning interactions. I like to design them in such a way that I can simply copy them from the original project and paste them into any project that requires them. I might spend many hours developing these solutions but can implement them into new projects in a matter of minutes. This greatly decreases my development time but also lowers my stress level. I never promise anything to a stakeholder that I don’t already have in my eLearning utility belt.

Keep learner seat time low

This one can be more challenging but worth it. It usually requires that you manage the expectations of your subject matter experts. Subject matter experts or SMEs are often assigned to you by the stakeholder for a project. These folks know everything about that area of the business. If it was up to them you would teach everything they know and the training would take many days for learners to complete. The reality is that most learners only need to know a small portion of the knowledge that the SME contains. Your eLearning projects should only include the knowledge and skills required to meet expectations. Optional material can be converted to another format. Also, material that would allow learners to take their knowledge and skill to the mastery level that an expert has can be reserved for when the stakeholder funds such a master level training program.

Use job aids whenever possible

Job aids are a great way to move content into an easy to development format that can be made available in a just-in-time way. My classic example of a parking sign is a good example of this. Sure you can make an eLearning course that teaches employees how to park in and around the various facilities at your organization but a simple parking sign (which is really just a job aid) can eliminate the need for your organization to develop a training course about parking. In this example, the parking sign (job aid) is made available in the exact location where it’s needed and there is no memorization required by your employees. They just need to follow the directions on the sign.

Rely on informal learning

There is some risk in informal learning but if you create a learning culture within your organization you can ensure that informal learning takes place. It can be as simple as giving people supervisory roles within your organization. Setting performance measurements on supervisors to include a certain amount of time in any given week to dedicate to training will ensure that regular employees learn from their mentors. You can develop job shadowing programs for very little expense (if any). Also, check if your organization has material you can already leverage. For example, one organization provided access to LinkedIn Learning. Most employees were unaware of this. By promoting this benefit, many employees will rely on this valuable resource to gain skills not only for their current role but for future positions as well.

Keep track of when learning is successful

Finally make sure that when learning proves to be successful, keep track of those successes. I like to include feedback from employee managers approximately 30-45 days after completing training. I simply ask one question.

How is your employee performing in the area related to the training?

If you can demonstrate that a previous performance gap is now addressed you might even be able to quantify it. For example, if last year there were a certain number of on the job accidents and this year your training has contributed to fewer accidents you can show the higher ups that your training has saved the company the cost associated with an injured employee.

Best Way to Share eLearning with Your Reviewers

In this video tutorial, I share with you the best way to share your eLearning for review with your subject matter experts, stakeholders, and clients.

https://www.reviewmyelearning.com/?captivateteacher

eLearning Livestream - L&D Lessons Learned | July 1st, 2019

Tune in Monday, July 1st at 12:00 EDT | 16:00 UTC for another eLearning livestream. This time we will be discussing L&D lessons that you have learned. Please share your ideas for this topic and more specific examples with me in the comments below or the comments over on YouTube. If you wish to participate in the live chat, be sure to watch the live stream on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/_CebjDMKN0I

Do One Small Thing Really Well At a Time

As an instructional designer, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the amount of work that I need to accomplish in a project. If you look at a project holistically, you may get that feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff. In a typical eLearning project, there might be hundreds or even thousands of objects, multimedia, narration, job aids, and so on. In most cases all of these objects are designed and developed by a very small group of people, sometimes just yourself. This can cause a great deal of anxiety that will prevent you from moving forward, and that’s just one project at a time. Imagine having two or three projects with competing timelines or deadlines.

I don’t do well under these circumstances so I have devised a method to deal with it. I say ‘I’ but I didn’t invent something new. It’s really just project management, but here is what I do. I break a project down to the smallest of tasks possible. Sure that seems obvious, but I mean really break it down. For example, one of the very first tasks in designing and developing a course is to meet with the stakeholder and discuss the business objectives of training. That seems like a small enough chunk, but how does that event happen? Well you have to break it down further. Perhaps just that one item is actually the following items:

1. Identify who the stakeholders for a project are (it may not always be obvious, and it may not be the person requesting the training).
2. Write an agenda for the initial meeting so that the stakeholder can come prepared to answer your questions.
3. Consider or ask stakeholders if subject matter experts should be invited to the initial meeting (can be dictated by the complexity of the proposed training).
4. Find available meeting space.
5. Send a meeting invite that includes the agenda to the stakeholder and any identified subject matter experts.

As you can see, turning the one item into five or more items can be beneficial. It can take the stress away of looking at a project from a thousand miles up, but also make it very clear what you need to do next. Before I used this method, I would often run idle, in that I wasn't sure what to do next. I would waste time and not progress as rapidly as I could have. If you look at any one of these tasks above, you can see they are really easy, most of them could be accomplished in as short a time as a few minutes or less. For example, step one could be a phone call or two; step two is a few minutes using a Microsoft agenda template and considering the questions you would have to begin an analysis; step three could probably be piggy-backed on one of the phone calls you might make for step one; and steps four and five again are just a few minutes in Microsoft Outlook.

I look at all of this and consider that even if you save yourself only a day over the course of a month or so, imagine what you can do to improve your design if you had an extra day to improve your course. I know I've been in situations where an extra day is all it would take to meet or exceed my customer’s expectation of me, or to go from good eLearning to really great eLearning.

I hope you find my thoughts on this topic useful. If you find that this method makes sense, or you have tried it and have a way to improve it, I would love to know. Feel free to leave a comment below so we can all benefit by your ideas.