On Demand is in Demand: Using Technology to Train 
By Margery Weinstein

While you may fancy yourself a training superhero, ready to swoop down and save your workers in their hour of need, you may want to consider on-demand learning as an alternative to becoming omnipresent.

Getting answers to your questions right when you have them is ideal, and it's more important now than it's ever been that solutions be readily available. "Typical training practices were devised for an earlier time," notes Patti Shank, president of Denver-based instructional design and technology consultancy Learning Peaks. "They don't work so well now.

Most work these days involves information that is beyond any one person's understanding. Information changes; sometimes you're dealing with contradictory information, and for any job, it's very hard to have all the information you need." That's why dynamic databases, such as external and internal wikis and blogs, come in handy. Conventional course-based training, whether online or in a classroom, still has its place, Shank says, but there's a good chance course material will need to be updated often.

So where's the sought-after, up-to-date information? Employees might appreciate a site like www. technorati.com, a blog-focused search engine, or http://del.icio.us, a Web service for storing and sharing Web bookmarks, to find out what the public thinks about a product line or industry they're developing plans for, but they might also check in with their company's own, internal wiki or blog to find out about past success with such products, and what colleagues think the line's future should be.

"You're using aggregate data to find out what's happening," Shank says. "Less and less are we looking at pre-defined, nicely packaged data sources [and] on-demand tutorials. Those things are still important, but sources of information for anybody who wants the latest are more Web 2.0," she explains, referring to a popular term used to describe the technology category wikis and blogs fall into.

External blogs and wikis can serve as a template for creating something similar exclusively for your employees. Shank advised a training manager in the biotechnology sector to take a cue from del.icio.us, technorati.com or www.wikipedia.org, a public, worldwide wiki, when he asked her how he could find a way to get his company's research scientists to post feedback for their colleagues' and technical salespeople's benefit. The training manager did as Shank advised, and browsed through a few of these public resources. When she saw him a couple of days later, he said he'd come up with tons of ideas for something similar for his company.

One idea Shank had for his organization involved producing a firewall-protected product-based wiki where a specific product or line would be the focus of each page. Employees would update these pages, and research scientists responsible for the product or line would monitor the pages.

Before such a site can be realized, though, a company must have what Shank calls "an atmosphere of sharing" in which cooperation is valued over competition. One way to do this is to offer time to share information as well as incentives for doing so.

Shank uses sales reps as an example: "If all your incentives pay you by making calls, and none of them are paying you by sharing information, you're not going to share information; you're going to make calls."

Shank advises a top-down approach where high-level execs are the first to share information on the wiki or blog. Shank says entry- and middle-level players may see this, and take a cue that it's a good thing to do. Since each contributor to a wiki or blog leaves behind an electronic trail, companies will know exactly who contributed what, and could even start coming up with awards for outstanding contributions to this shared knowledge base. You might even try holding employees accountable for how much—or how little—information they share with colleagues, says Marc Rosenberg, president of Hillsborough, N.J.-based individual and organizational performance consultancy Marc Rosenberg and Associates.

"I'd like to see performance appraisals where a category [of the appraisal] is how much of your knowledge did you share or teach others," he says of just one way of encouraging contributions. "The bottom line is, if you don't have a knowledge-sharing culture, none of these technologies will really work."

Rosenberg also notes the initial material posted to the wiki or blog must be relevant to the company. "It has relevance to their work; it is perceived to be accurate and highly reliable; it's perceived as the best place to get information; it's easy to access; it's easy to update," he says of the attributes your wiki or blog needs in order to become an optimum on-demand learning tool.Once the submissions start pouring in, Shank says it might be worthwhile to follow up with those who've logged in the most to see what effect their participation in and use of the resource is having.

Since those who log onto wikis and blogs leave behind an electronic trail, you can seek out those people for feedback. If, for example, it's a product-based wiki that details latest developments to these items, you could ask them specifically what they've learned about the products, or what questions about the products were answered through use of the wiki. Meanwhile, you also want to keep in mind the need to monitor the content. Unlike a World Wide Web-based wiki or blog that is edited by the online community— which means anyone who happens upon the content—the tool your company houses may need more intervention, Rosenberg says.

"You may have community editing, but the community may be very strictly defined as to who is expert enough and who has the right and doesn't have the right to do it," Rosenberg explains of possible rules that might be put in place to control who has the ability to contribute.

The Online Cheat Sheet

Companies are also using on-demand technology to offer workers a quick way to refresh their memories. Intrepid Learning Solutions, a Seattle-based provider of consulting and outsourcing services and research, is now providing clients with what it calls its Online Reference Tool (ORT).

The sales team of one of the firm's customers has a "fairly rigorous sales process they follow with multiple people touching the customer at different times, and they have probably four different [employees who] are the core team, and up to a dozen-plus different roles that all interact with each other," says client manager Lynette Glass of why its client needed a tool like ORT to guide salespeople through the sales workflow process.

That process was so complex, Glass says, the company needed something that would help the confused salesperson remember who does what and, where, or with whom the prospective customer will interact next. With ORT, the employee just goes online to an intranet page, selects his or her particular sales role by clicking on the proper icon, and is guided through the sales process from the perspective of that particular role within the company.

That ORT also includes links to documents such as service level agreements and highlights which areas are the employee's responsibilities, and which are not. The worker also can click on other employee roles at the company to get a run-down on the entire workflow process from additional perspectives.

At Intrepid, workers also are taken through classroom training to learn the sales workflow process, so the on-demand technology serves as an any-time refresher. "They have a four-hour instructor-led training, and in that training we take them through the ORT, Glass says, "and then they have that as a reference to get their questions answered just in time for all the nitty-gritties."

Stratacache, a Dayton, Ohio-based provider of multi-platform software and appliance-based technology, has created a system whereby workers, such as retail store associates, can get instant help with tasks such as setting up window displays and selling to target demographics. The tool, known as OmniCast, allows companies to take video files and distribute them simultaneously to all of their branches, says CEO Chris Riegel.

Content can be downloaded to any mobile device or computer with Internet access. "We're seeing a tremendous amount of ad-hoc sales communication," says Riegel, who says take-it-anytime video instruction might include topics such as how to optimize display layout to get the best results or what the top five features of a piece of equipment the store sells are. "It is increasingly short—five-, seven-, ten-minute—videos," Riegel says, "that I might get one or two or three or five a day that just feed particular messages or discussion, product, company or feature points into these associates' heads."

At Oklahoma City-based American Fidelity Assurance, an insurance and financial services provider, managers get instant online help when they're stumped, says Bev Wood, vice president of training. If an employee has an interview with a job applicant tomorrow, and needs to look up a company policy or sample questions, he can log onto "Tools for Managers," on the company's intranet.

In addition to on-demand help, the site provides not only links to courses, but communication tips for topics such as explaining company dress code and compensation policies.

It wasn't always this way, though, Wood notes. She says the company has come to realize the benefit of on demand. "That's really re-tooled from what we used to make available to managers," she says of the intranet site. "There used to just be forms online, and rather than having them wait for a course three months from now on interviewing, they'll be able to go online and get what they need when they need it."

In areas such as hiring, which Wood says some of her company's managers may only do once every couple of years, offering only coursework as preparation isn't enough. Her team could offer managers a great class on best practices in interviewing next week, but by the time they finally get a chance to use the skills, the material wouldn't be fresh in their minds. "Being able to go right to a site and get either a course, questions, forms or procedures, is going to save them a lot of time," she points out.

Similarly, every two to three years, the company does a benchmark of its positions against the marketplace, which, like the hiring process, the company also lends online support to. An intranet guide instructs managers how to find the information the company needs to conduct its analysis.

New employees can also use the company's intranet for assistance and learning. The intranet site features a glossary that allows a confused worker to look up insurance industry jargon such as "any occ," which he may not know refers to a person with a disability who is now unable to work in any occupation.

Typing the mystery term into the glossary search tool calls up a working definition, which enables the employee to figure it out herself without having to stop and ask a colleague.

"When employees come to orientation, we let them know it's there and how to find it," Wood says, "so, when they're in conversations they can just jot down terms they don't recognize, and then go out there, and find out what it is, if they don't want to ask."

And learning that jargon that will enable them to pass on the knowledge-sharing process to the next industry ingenue.

On Demand and On Email

Sometimes on-demand can be as easy as knowledge bases housed within and accessed from a company's e-mail system. Such is the case at West Kingston, R.I.-based power supply devices provider American Power Conversion Corp. (APC). The company operates an on-demand knowledge resource for all its employees through its Lotus Notes e-mail system known as the "K-Base," says director of training Tom Kiernan. "We have call centers based worldwide, and we use a knowledge base to enable our employees to have quick access to the knowledge they need to help solve customers' technical problems," he points out.

If a customer calls with a question about an APC product that supports his company's data center, the customer service rep would just click on the electronic folder related to the product in the K-Base to get a quick understanding of how the device operates. Kiernan estimates that the company has hundreds of K-Base databases housed within Lotus Notes.

One of the advantages to giving workers access to on-demand learning through a tool users are already familiar with is that finding information doesn't involve any exotic maneuvers on the computer. In the case of the K-Base, all it takes is a standard keyword search to locate elusive nuggets of knowledge. In addition to information relating to the company's product offerings, the tool allows users to find answers to frequently asked questions, tips for product troubleshooting and "information trees," such as those diagramming APC staff functions and layout, so employees who can't figure it out on their own know who to turn to. "If something needs to be escalated, they would know exactly what next step to take to help the customer."

—M.W.

Lecturing Them—At Their Convenience

One way companies are allowing employees to get potentially useful information at their convenience is through making lectures available via iPod or personal digital assistant (PDA), says Jon Aleckson, president and CEO of Web Courseworks, a Web-based training course modules and Internet portal provider in Madison, Wis. In addition to the handy devices' customer service and sales rep-related uses, whereby an employee can type in a query for a customer in the store, office-based learners can use an iPod or another MP3 player to catch presentations they might not have access to otherwise.

Some companies make available podcasts from sources like the Harvard Business Review (HBR) from Harvard Business School Press (HBSP), Aleckson says. For the last five years, he explains, HBSP has made agreements with companies that give them access to interviews with its contracted authors. One company Aleckson worked with has made HBR podcasts available through its online leadership portal. "This is becoming more common, getting that download to the executive," he says, "and when they have down time, they can listen to it."

Along with MP3 downloads, companies also are making available online libraries in which users can search through a library of book content by typing in the title or even just a keyword relating to a specific piece of information they need. Learners ideally will use this in concert with the material they download as a resource for conducting follow-up research. If employees hear an interview about a book with a section that interests them, they could search for it through the online library, either to read in its entirety, or to find the precise parts that might help them.

The curiosity a podcast sparks can go even further than that, with employees perhaps subsequently encouraged to enroll in a formal class. The same way a searchable online library and podcasts are available through an intranet, so, too, could links to available related classes. Aleckson suggests "making existing material available, and then having links to more information, and then, ultimately to information of formal learning on the Web where you do get credit."

—M.W.

Reprinted from Traning magazine, VNU