Many organizations today operate with a dispersed workforce – employees in varying locations (potentially world wide) performing the same or similar job function. Inherently such organizations have moved to mobile and eLearning technologies to obviate the need of bringing employees to a central location for training purposes. This has become what is most frequently referred to as a “blended approach”. By in large this strategy works quite well, however there is left an unmet benefit of live, instructor led training, that being, the application of skills.
At Outcomes Today® we categorize learning activities into two dimensions:
- Knowing: The specific knowledge & skills an employee will require to perform a given job task.
- Doing: The ability to apply that knowledge/skill most effectively to specific job tasks.
Mobile and eLearning do exceptionally well for the knowing part – mastering the knowledge needed, but can fall short on the doing aspect because the employee is frequently left on their own to apply that knowledge the best way they can visualize.
We have coined the phrase “distributed learning” to exemplify our strategy of combining self study learning with scenario based engagement conducted in a live setting.
The live component is then conducted in small group format in close proximity to the individual(s) work location and thus obviate the need to travel to a central location consuming an inordinate amount of time away from the work function. Further, this strategy engages the immediate supervisors, local subject matter experts, or qualified peers to facilitate the application workshop.
By engaging supervisors and/or local “experts” in the delivery process, you will gain a new level of training reinforcement enabling specific coaching by the supervisor to further drive performance improvement.
A cornerstone of this strategy are the 60 MINUTES for Impact® series of workshops described elsewhere.
Please contact us for a free initial consultation about implementing Distributed Learning in your organization.