E-learning Hero

Faster than a training auditor! More powerful than an untrained workforce! Able to leap tall budget cuts with a single bound!

This article looks at the concept of having an E-learning Hero leading the charge at your facility. Basically, an E-learning Hero is an individual who keeps the momentum of the training program long after its implementation. Without this hero in place, E-learning has a potential chance to fail. Let’s look at an all too familiar scenario which Plain Talk has seen.

Background
A manfuacturing company XYZ is moving their organization’s curriculum towards E-learning. Their training director is not experienced with technology-based training, but he is convinced that the benefits of E-learning outweigh those of traditional methods. This is compounded by the fact that he desired to put a traceable certification program in place, which the new technology will allow for. He was a great champion in selling his ideas to senior management, as they agreed to move forward with the development.

One year later, Company XYZ had a customized training portal in place, consisting of multiple learning modules, which workers used as part of their certification process. Our E-learning Hero won multiple awards for the training, wowed auditors with its tracking abilities, fought supervisors to make time for the training, and brought continued excitement to the company about this new way to complete worker training requirements.

What went wrong?
Six months after the Training Portal was launched, our E-learning Hero took an early retirement offer from the company. At the time of his departure, our hero was the only person that knew a thing about the basics of the portal’s administration and, more importantly, the way the E-learning piece fit into the entire certification program. Senior management made a costly error in not taking a strong enough effort in passing the torch of E-learning Hero to a successor. In fact, they did not even replace the training director’s position; instead, they split his responsibilities between the remaining training staff members. Nothing bad can happen here, right?

The results
Needless to say, the remaining training members had all kinds of problems with the administration of the portal, and they never had the passion as our hero did. When supervisors complained that they did not have time to put their workers through the training, there was no pushback from the training group. As a result, E-learning was no longer being used, and the one million dollar investment went to waste.

Conclusion
We can’t stress enough on how important an E-learning Hero is to the success of an E-learning program. They will get your company though the tough times and provide a good friend to your organization’s investment. Here are some important abilities that an E-learning Hero should have.

• The enthusiasm to pass along the benefits of E-learning to others.
• The craftiness to implement the technology-based training within a structure that requires
  mandatory participation by employees.
• The strength to be the go-to person with questions, or complaints, about the system.
• The desire to promote and market the system (win some awards; get some articles written about it at a local or national level).
• The ability to create an environment that accepts E-learning as part of a normal training
  methodology.
• The foresight to work with an eventual successor for E-learning Hero, so the system remains part of the company’s infrastructure long after our hero rides off into the sunset.