When we think of transformation, we obviously think of change management and its winning trio: involvement + communication + training.
These three levers are used to support employees at every stage of their appropriation: fear, doubt, understanding, interest, adhesion, adoption and learning.
It is possible, for example, to:
- Organize awareness meetings to reassure employees, palliate their fears and answer their questions. Why is transformation necessary? How will it benefit the enterprise and, above all, me? Which changes will affect me personally?
- Communicate about projects to the entire organization: posters, internal webinars with questions & answers, newsletters, informative emails, competitions, etc.
- Create collaborative spaces and forums for discussions with project managers and between employees.
- Produce e-learning media, massive open online course (MOOC) and serious games to increase awareness and inform people about projects.
- Present digital transformation as a priority and determinant for the business and future success of the company
The change management must provide for different levels of discourse according to the audience concerned, obviously allocating more time to the most hesitant people. Remember that just as digital systems improve and speed interactions with customers, they can do the same thing with employees!
Looking beyond change management, it is vital to devise durable support schemes to maintain and develop employees’ skills. Training has a key role to play.
To support transformation, training is transforming too…
Nine out of ten human resources managers are convinced they have a key role to play in corporate digital transformation, yet 70% of them think that their own transformation is moving too slowly .
With the arrival of digital technologies, personnel management functions and training in particular have become more employee-centric, proposing e-learning, learning management systems (LMS), massive open online courses (MOOC), corporate open online courses (COOC), and more.
Digital is transforming training offers, for example by enabling new collaborative and virtual learning systems. But do these fully meet the needs of trainees?
… but it needs to be better matched to trainees’ needs.
New digital training schemes must adapt to the evolving needs of today’s trainees. Employees want to be untethered and autonomous; they are impatient and don’t have much time to spare for training. At best they will take a quick glance at e-learning modules on the LMS or participate in a MOOC when (or rather if) they have some spare time.
But could the effectiveness of training depend more on the general training approach than on the actual training media?
The diagram above entitled «Meet the Modern Learner» from Bersin by Deloitte shows that time is of the essence in the life of trainees and staff. Two thirds of them say they don’t have enough time to do their work and that they can spare barely 1% of their time for training. That’s just 4.2 minutes a day! So it’s easy to understand their reluctance to spend more than 4 minutes watching an e-learning video, and that training schemes need to be short, precise and available just at the right moment.
Ways of learning have evolved: people have taken control of their own training; they now train themselves on the job. They seek the information and learning media they need – but only when they need it. Practice and experience account for 70% of what they know (as confirmed by the «70/20/10 model»), and 70% of them search for information outside traditional training channels to resolve their problems.
Learning has become continuous, collaborative and informal. Trainees find on-the-job-learning to be the most appropriate and effective.
Employees evolve as their organizations transform, obliging training departments to adapt their training approach and programs.
For computer applications and digital tools a completely new approach is needed. It is particularly important to assist trainees and even experienced users when they are actually inputting data to ensure that they fully understand their business environment and usages, as well as the computer aspects.
The digital transformation cuts across all business activities, so it must be a shared objective. The entire organizational model must be revamped, sweeping aside long-established habits and silo mentalities and instilling a new corporate spirit!