Efficient e-learning

Chinese managers have heard of what a corporate university is. They understand that corporate universities are educational organizations established and managed by corporations. The purpose of these universities is to enhance the ability of employees and suppliers to help customers use the company's products more effectively.

However, the next key question is "why".

Why is your company building a corporate university?

Because corporate universities can place more emphasis on training for the company's business strategy, rather than training for training's sake.

Because Corporate University is a powerful tool for executing new business strategies, giving people the skills to turn vision into reality.

Because the investment of a corporate university pays off. Research shows that every $680 increase in a company's training spending per employee leads to an average six percent increase in shareholder return on investment.

Why do your managers need a corporate university?

Because they can share their knowledge and experience with more colleagues.

Because they can amplify the effectiveness of training, corporate universities are all about giving training a deeper and clearer image.

Because they can update their skills without taking up too much work time.

Answering the "why" question, it's the "how" question.

How to build a corporate university? More and more businesses are taking a technological approach. Specifically, it is e-learning (e-learning), training through the Internet or other interactive technologies.

Let's see how several leading companies are ensuring e-learning and making corporate universities work for business.

Accenture: Building Thousands of Universities

How many universities does a company need to build for its employees? Accenture's answer is: one employee, one university.

How does Accenture do this with eLearning?

Like most multinational companies, Accenture needed to build a new employee training system. This multinational consulting and technical services company has operations in many countries around the world and meets the business needs of a variety of clients. To meet these needs, Accenture has developed a corporate culture centered on continuous learning. Every year, companies invest 6% of their annual revenue in training, compared with an average of 1% for general companies, and only 4% for companies that focus on training.

In fact, ask Accenture employees why they join and stay with the company, and the number one reason is "training."

However, Accenture's training efforts were originally centralized, like most companies. Companies are faced with inconsistent and constantly changing customer needs, especially their technology needs. The traditional approach is slow in response and high in cost.

In a speech, Ian Napier, global managing partner in charge of education, said: "In order to maximize the benefits of investment, we have shifted the center of the learning strategy to the individual."

Accenture to the enterprise The university implemented several important changes: from top-down training to user access training; and from competency-based courses to client-need-based courses.

Core transformation: classroom training is transformed into e-learning.

Technology is only one part of Accenture's corporate university model, but online training courses continue to grow. Through e-learning, Accenture can save time, reduce costs, and reduce the occupation of working hours. Of course, the number of classrooms and buildings used for training has been drastically reduced.

Accenture enhances employee skills by delivering training content to employees through an efficient web-based system. Training courses can be accessed at multiple points, in companies, clients, at home, on the road, and abroad, as long as there is Internet access. Course content can even be synchronized with a PDA.

Everyone's web interface can be personalized. By logging into the web interface "My Learning", employees can arrange their own learning and manage their own learning needs. Employees want to learn a certain course, they can search in the course catalog. If employees want to find articles, they can use the search engine provided by My Learning. Employees can enroll themselves in the required courses and have a clear picture of their learning progress, such as which courses have been taken and which will be taken.

Allbusiness.com's Gail Johnson explains that Accenture uses a searchable database to ensure employees have direct access to experts in specific fields. "Each expert's profile describes their expertise. All expert profiles are entered into this database and employees can contact them for cooperation or questions."

As a result, training can be conducted in real-time, 24 hours a day. If employees want to acquire a certain skill or accumulate knowledge, e-learning is always on call. Or employees take a break from work, he can use these time for training, and the online system can easily implement. One approach Accenture takes is modeled after a flight simulator. For example, if an employee in the accounting department wants to learn break-even analysis, the simulator will guide you through the process. The software guides him to watch expert videos or take part in online training. This will help him successfully complete the study.

Napier says the result of e-learning is "half reduction in pre-market development time, lower training costs, and reduction in personal training time including travel time".

Accenture knows its corporate university works because the company has long been a benchmark in assessing return on investment in training. If you're evaluating the ROI of training, there are two important benchmarks: productivity and retention. In an article in the company's Outlook magazine, authors David Y. Smith and Tad Waddington explain this as follows:

Assessing Productivity. Do your employees trust that what they have learned can be applied to the workplace? Has their productivity improved significantly? Have their skills and knowledge improved?

More than half of Accenture employees say the training has significantly improved their productivity.

Assessor retention rates. After training, do your employees feel they are treated fairly? Are they planning to stay with the company two years from now? Will they think the company is a good place to work?

A survey of Accenture employees who have attended training shows that six times as many think the company is a “great place to work” and twice as many plan to stay at the company after two years.

At the Chicagoland Learning Leaders Conference, Accenture Chief Learning Officer Don Vanthournout told attendees that Accenture employees spend an average of 80 hours a year in training, "Every dollar Accenture invests in training After cost recovery, net gain of $3.53."

That's why Accenture is building more universities.

Verizon Wireless: Making Training More Fun

For Verizon Wireless, training is serious work, but it can also be fun.

First of all, training is serious. Trainers often need to tie training content directly to company goals. In this way, there is a clear relationship between training and company success.

Lou Tedrick, senior vice president of people development, told Training magazine: "The training program has to have a business motivation. When we think about what to do, we ask, 'What are we going to do? Which KPI to improve?''What do we expect?''What is the impact on customers?' Then we make decisions about how to do things from a training perspective."

Verizon also has a strong understanding of the technology used in training. Very cautious. Except when face-to-face communication is required, classrooms are used for training, and companies generally use online technology to achieve training. For example, in new employee training, online virtual courses provide information on codes of conduct, compensation, and more. New hires can browse payroll and other information better delivered online after work. This reserves time for classroom training on more important topics. In an interview with Training magazine, Steve Gerson, the company's national curriculum development manager, said: "Interpersonal communication in the classroom is a must, and with everyone, you don't feel alone. It's traditional. , but we keep it so we can talk together."

Verizon's combination of tradition and high technology has made it a leader in corporate training, ranked in the top five by Training magazine. Tedrick believes that this is not enough. Second, training should be fun.

For Tedrick, the challenge was getting younger employees involved in learning. This allows her to determine whether they can meet the manpower needs for the next five to eight years. "My inspiration came from my two children. They were five and ten. They were playing the zoo tycoon game, and they thought independently and figured out how to get customers to visit the zoo. For example, to buy more Crocodiles, or more bathrooms?"

Tedrick explained that when talking about the "Corporate University Xchange" award, she initially asked the team to find a business proposition that could be combined with the 3D learning game, and the result of the combination was Verizon The birth of the Wireless virtual store. This virtual store has virtual managers, customers, and salespeople. If a customer comes in and asks a question, managers make a decision. According to different needs, the situation can also be a salesperson. If the manager responds effectively, an online coach pops up to assess his performance. If the manager does something wrong, the online coach that pops up will work with him to discuss ways to correct it.

This game is not for everyone. The upper age limit for participants in the game is about 36, Tedrick said, an age when people aren't used to gaming technology. They like it, but need more guidance to help them master the game. This simulation game is quite suitable for young people, especially frontline sales representatives between the ages of 29-33. "We think it's a better way to teach skills like salesmanship," Tedrick also found people playing the game over and over, trying different steps, and even making mistakes on purpose. Virtual allows them to do so without any hesitation.

These employees will "fail" during certain game phases, but their performance proves that this simulation training will win everyone to the end.

Cisco: Combination of coaching and coaching

Teachers teach, managers practice. A good teacher will teach and practice.

Cisco is just that. Cisco is the world's leading supplier of network equipment and network management.

At Cisco, eLearning comes from the top. Chairman and CEO John Chambers has long stated that learning is a strategic priority for the company. The next point is to e-learning.

In an interview with the American Association for Training and Development, Chambers said, "I like e-learning because it enables employees to be more productive and can do it anytime, anywhere. In the rapidly changing Internet economy , e-learning changes the way to keep employees up to date with new technologies and information.”

Chambers has reason to be optimistic about e-learning. E-learning requires increased network traffic, and his company has more profit opportunities. And Cisco's own e-learning has earned it trust in the technology. Excellence in corporate training has earned Cisco a number of awards, including the Corporate Learning Excellence and Innovation Award from Corporate University Xchange. The award recognizes "a corporate culture that combines work and study to encourage learning anytime, anywhere; and good practices in cultivating that culture".

However, looking back, e-learning did not go smoothly at Cisco, and the company's training was a mess.

Tom Kelly has been appointed to lead Cisco's eLearning Solutions Group. "It was Chambers who started it," Kelly said. "The mission was 'to be a model and make it work for millions.'" Perth's challenge, the eLearning Solutions Group and the eLearning stakeholders within the company formed the Cisco eLearning Business Committee.

“The first step for the eLearning Solutions Group was to create a learning portal that would consolidate all the learning resources the company provides for systems engineers and business managers.”

The portal, now called the Cisco Learning Network, will give learners access to Numerous resources including discussion groups, online libraries, online courses, white papers, PPT presentations, recommended books and videos, and more.

The sales force is the group that clearly benefits from e-learning. Classroom training takes up their customer visit time, travel time, sales time; eLearning allows them to re-use all of that time.

In addition to saving time, the eLearning Solutions Group found that eLearning has changed the way they measure success, from classroom performance satisfaction to competency enhancement on the job.

Factory workers also benefit. It is estimated that e-learning accounts for an average of one quarter of every million dollars saved in process improvement; e-learning also increases skill acquisition by 80 percent.

Cisco's eLearning technology continues to evolve. According to Channel Web, the second generation of technology can provide "prescription" learning, where students take a test before a course and based on the test results, the system recommends which part of the course to choose. Preparatory learning can reduce the volume of courses by 40%-60%.

E-learning keeps moving forward. The more Cisco practices, the more it can teach.