August 28, 2000

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Online Learning: The Competitive Edge

Companies blend E-learning into their business strategies to maximize intellectual capital

By Gene Koprowski

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nline learning has gained acceptance as an alternative form of education that delivers training to every desktop and helps companies reduce employee travel costs. Yet some companies have also come to believe that E-learning provides them with a competitive edge, and they are incorporating it into their overall business strategies.

Burson-Marsteller Inc., a New York communications and marketing firm with 75 offices and 2,000 employees, has made a considerable investment in both online and classroom training. "Our product is our ideas," says Barbara Smith, chief learning officer for Burson-Marsteller. "If we don't have the best people creating the best product, we can't compete. What I'm after is creating the best people in the industry. E-learning is an option that provides us with a real competitive edge--it helps us maximize our intellectual capital."

U.S. companies last year spent about $62.5 billion training employees, $3 billion of which was spent on IT-based delivery of training, according to a recent report by WR Hambrecht & Co. and International Data Corp. By 2003, companies are expected to spend $11.5 billion annually on electronically delivered education.

But E-learning is rarely the sole answer for employee-education needs. "We know that this isn't a panacea for everything," says James Sharpe, director of distributed learning for IBM Global Services. "This is not an absolute solution."

Rather, E-learning must be integrated into ongoing training processes at companies and viewed as an adjunct to face-to-face classroom instruction. At Interim Services Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., staffing company, E-learning won't replace other training initiatives. "Our expectation is that E-learning will complement other development activities," says Perry Borman, Interim Services' director of organizational development.

According to training executives, there are four levels of learning that companies must accommodate if they are to train their employees properly. One is basic knowledge transfer--an imparting of information about an industry, a line of business, or particular processes used within that field. Another is interactive learning, in which the student takes the basic knowledge and applies it to a given scenario in a simulation. Then comes collaborative learning, in which the student takes the information gleaned in the two earlier learning modules and applies it to a project he or she is working on with colleagues. Finally, there's group-level instruction or conferences. "When you do bring your associates together, you should try to get the biggest bang for the buck," Sharpe says. "Basic knowledge transfer should have already occurred. That knowledge should be a prerequisite before you can actually show up at a conference."

Sharpe says many companies don't have properly structured training initiatives. Some send employees off to conferences hoping they'll come away with useful knowledge. By using E-learning to impart basic knowledge, employees can get the most out of group-instruction time and more readily improve job performance with their newfound skills.

Creating a companywide E-learning system is not a simple process of slapping some content on an intranet and licensing a few skills-development courses. Learning initiatives must be closely correlated with a company's overall strategy--and its corporate vision--if they're to succeed.

Proponents say training must be perceived by senior executives as a key operational function, like sales, marketing, and manufacturing. If a company outsources E-learning content creation or infrastructure to a vendor, it can't forget about training as a top business priority. Otherwise, the knowledge level of the employees won't grow and the company won't flourish.

"The first thing we thought of when we began looking at E-learning was, how does this fit into our strategy? What are we trying to accomplish here?" says Interim's Borman, whose company employs 10,000 full-time workers and a legion of temporary employees that serve its client base. "We wanted to build the most competitive workforce in our industry. Ongoing skills development is essential to that."

When devising the companywide E-learning program last year, the staffing company's executives started by determining the skill level for each position within the organization--from clerk to manager to executive--and then developed a skills road map. The road map outlines all the knowledge employees should have to perform their jobs, and successive jobs, within the company.

Interim found that putting the road map together was a lengthy and tedious process, involving the directors of various departments. But once complete, the goal of communicating its vision to employees could begin. "They needed to be shown what skills were important for them to have for their current jobs, as well as the competencies that would be important for future positions they wanted to fill," Borman says.

Management notified Interim employees via E-mail about the company's new training methodology and its intranet, which contains online job descriptions on what Interim calls its Me Inc. training site. The job descriptions there include details about what skills the employee or job applicant should have.

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Illustration by Nicholas Wilton
Photo of Borman by Tony Arruza

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