August 28, 2000

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Online Learning: The Competitive Edge

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More on e-learning:

Online Learning Tests Wireless Waters (7/24/00) E-Learning Provider Partners With EDS (7/17/00) EETimes E-learning is a 24 x 7 endeavor (7/31/00)

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Now the vision of ongoing E-learning and skills assessment is communicated to employees as soon as they join a company. "Our basic orientation program is online," says Smith of Burson-Marsteller. "All employees see it and are aware of the company's mission and goals. There are also different skills assessment tests online, which lets them see where they are in their development."

In the early days of E-learning--meaning much of the 1990s--the only widely available offerings focused on developing IT skills. Training for so-called soft skills--management, leadership, writing, and strategic thinking--has emerged within the past few years, but the options are still limited. There are a handful of companies that can provide soft-skills development for a set licensing fee, including About .com, DigitalThink.com, and SkillSoft.com. But a company that has very specific skills requirements, such as a sales program for a new product, must develop its own content or outsource that customization job to one of the E-learning vendors.

Customized E-learning content requires collaboration among a number of departments. Many large companies already have some sort of training department that spearheads that effort and specializes in understanding what skills are needed companywide.

Burson-Marsteller has a five-person training department that has traveled to company offices around the world for the past two years, conducting one-or two-day seminars on skills development. But the company's skills experts are now being deployed to develop online curriculum in each of the disciplines that the company finds important for its employees, Smith says. "We're packaging for the E-learning program the key skills that people have to have, including media relations, writing, strategy, and presentation."

The training personnel worked closely with the company's Web-design and graphics department, and consulted with its IT department. Because the company was already using the Lotus Notes and Domino-based intranet for internal communications, it used those technologies to deliver its curriculum when it launched the E-learning initiative in January.

Some of the courses are already available, while others are in development, including those on perception management and integrated marketing communications. Courses have been designed to be intuitive and interactive, and use simple animation tools to convey the learning message. One course the company developed was called Fun with Finance. "This is an online training course that's about how to do basic finances. It's entertaining and informative. It's the model for what we're doing with the other skills courses," Smith says.

The company's graphics design department--not IT--helped link the Lotus Notes program to the company's E-learning databases through middleware. But with the competitive pressures facing businesses these days, developing E-learning systems outside of the IT department may not be all that unusual, says IBM's Sharpe. "If an E-learning initiative comes from a particular line of business, IT and human resources may not even be involved," he says. "Departments may be looking for someone to help develop the content, and even possibly host it, and then go away in six months."

Installing E-learning systems and creating or licensing the content is a huge managerial task. But there's another challenge that executives have before them: getting employees to buy in to the E-learning initiatives.

That's not always easy, says David Wertheim, business manager for Hewlett-Packard Education Services, which produces training content for both HP and its customers. "Sometimes employees are reluctant to give up the perks--to give up the travel to the conference in San Francisco, which they planned to take their family to and turn into a mini-vacation," Wertheim says. Companies, conversely, often view those savings as a huge benefit. IBM last year saved $200 million by reducing travel expenses for educational seminars through E-learning projects, Sharpe says.

Getting employees to actually attend scheduled online classes can be a chore as well, says David Daines, director of employee and organizational development at NuSkin Enterprises Inc., a Provo, Utah, toiletries company. "That's why making the classes available 24-by-7 is important," he says. "Employees can fit them into their own schedules."

Companies also need to consider cultural issues, particularly if they have global operations. "In some countries, learning is expert-based, and people may feel as if they have learned nothing if they haven't met with the expert on a particular issue," says Smith of Burson-Marsteller. "That's why a blended approach--traditional learning and E-learning--is very effective."

E-learning--once viewed as impractical for the development of many skills--appears to be moving past the early adopter stage. What's on tap is for more companies to integrate E-learning into their traditional training programs and explore ways to use it to improve bottom-line performance.

"I think the early adoptive phase is over," IBM's Sharpe says. "The seriousness with which many companies are treating E-learning indicates that this isn't a maturing market--it has matured. And in the coming years, you'll see broad-based business skills E-learning eclipse IT skills E-learning, which today has the lion's share of users.

E-learning is one way to be smarter than the competition."

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Illustration by Nicholas Wilton
Photo of Smith by Edward Santalone

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