eloitte Consulting is the largest management consultancy in the world and offers global experience and local knowledge to help private and public businesses prosper. The Learning Solutions practice falls under the Human Capital service area and is focused on creating next-generation learning organizations and digital learning strategies.
There are four major capabilities that Deloitte Consulting has on Learning Solutions:
1. Learning Advisory: Helping the clients improve their efficiency, alignment and effectiveness of their learning functions.
2. Digital Learning Experience: Delivering impactful, human-centered strategies that address the digital reality and drive organizational performance.
3. Learning Content COE: Engaging learners and improving learner experience through high-value learning content.
4. Learning Technology Enablement: Improving learning technology investments and building the most effective strategy to enable the future of work and achieve business goals.
In today’s age of knowledge capital, learning plays an important role in defining an organization’s competitive advantage. Growth of an of organization in terms of learning can differentiate it from its competitors, be it in the form of the ability of the organizations to learn or to connect the employees with one another. An empowered learning community drives innovation and effectiveness. The organizations that perform higher than their peers are shown to have an environment where learning is at the heart of the corporate culture. And the C-suite in these organizations emphasizes skill building and retention by fostering a learning environment that is optimized across content, technology and processes.
The corporate learning landscape has undergone a massive upheaval in the past 2-3 years and a new vision has emerged: Learner centric and Learner driven learning, stipulated by content derived from many internal and external sources, enhanced by collaborative knowledge sharing and that is focused on building key knowledge and skills at the same time. Until recently, the execution of this concept remained highly manual that made this a daunting prospect. Now, with the advent of technology, this vision can be executed. New technologies, built mobile first, with social and collaboration capabilities as learning methods, speak directly to learner preferences and behaviors shaped by commercial technologies.
The internship is centered around a learning solutions project for a leading pharmaceutical company. The client in question is a global medical products and services company with expertise in medical devices, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology (referred to as ‘Company X’ in the report for non-disclosure purposes). The project pertains to restructuring the learning environment of Company X and enabling the global community of the company with high quality, relevant, and innovative learning experiences in order to advance the Learning Culture at the company.
It is important to define what learning encompasses with respect to the company. Learning here is defined as the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing existing knowledge, behavior, skills, values or preferences which may lead to a potential change in depth of knowledge, attitude or behavior.
To address the challenges related to various global functions of the company, ‘Program ABC’ was set up with an objective to transform the way the company does business, by simplifying and standardizing processes to prepare for future growth. This program has a workstream dedicated to serving the learning needs of the organization. The Learning Solutions program at Company X aims to deliver an improved experience for Learners and Learning Professionals, a best-in-class LMS, optimized curriculum, standardized processes and governance, to drive towards advancing the Learning culture.
OBJECTIVES
1. Creation of Global Learning Standards as a guiding principle for the re-designed learning organization at Baxter. The Learning Standards will allow Baxter to streamline their learning content, upscale their learning measurement and evaluation and define the technical requirements of the enterprise wide learning management system.
2. Rationalization of Content and Vendor for the client that will lead to cost savings and creating more robust and futuristic learning repository for the organizational learners at Baxter.
The scope of the project was defined and the goals established
The Learning Solutions Program was created with four primary objectives:
1. Create an effective learning strategy and governance model that establishes visibility, accountability and supports efficient and effective operations across learning groups.
2. Implement a learning services model that centralizes common, administrative tasks.
3. Develop a technology solution to address the multiple Learning Management Systems.
4. Outline a transformation roadmap that drives additional improvements.
Throughout the remainder of 2018, the Learning Solutions team will continue to consolidate learning management systems, evaluate and rationalize curricula, optimize learning vendor spend, and implement a company-wide learning governance model. The ultimate goal is to launch a single Enterprise Learning Management System in 2018.
Learning Solutions will bring an enhanced user experience and a one-stop-shop for learning across Company X. For their Learning Professionals, this effort will establish a collaborative community for knowledge sharing and enable a greater focus on strategic L&D work.
Learning organizations provide the tools and create the structures to enable rapid, on-demand, curated learning and knowledge sharing. In this context, it was found that Company X was a learning-led organization as opposed to the desired state of learner-led organization. The characteristics of each of the types were defined.
• Learning is pushed, and the organization focuses on teaching or education
• Courses are delivered as discrete, formal learning events
• Trainers have access to the most information
• Technology and tools are used primarily for content creation and distribution • Information and knowledge are shared quickly, creatively, and constructively
• Systems and technologies support collaborative work and learner-curated experiences
• Learning resources and modalities are responsive in real-time to changes in learner needs
• Learning is mobile-ready and accessible regardless of physical location, time, or device.
A comparative analysis was carried out to identify the gaps in learning at Company X and it was observed that high-impact learning organizations are reinventing their businesses through a shift from training culture to learning culture. These are the findings of the study:
Work on Learning Standards:
To allow Company X to transition from a decentralized and fragmented learning environment to a centralized model, one of the major aims of the project is to have certain guidelines at a global level that will define the structure of the learning community at Company X. These Learning Standards were built to serve as a guide for the management of learning activities and development of new learning content.
Purpose of Learning Standards:
• Define the minimum criteria that must be met for learning content to be approved and delivered at Company X.
• Outline the content, technology, and delivery requirements that must be met to maximize the learner experience.
• Apply to all learning activities at Company X to ensure that Learning is impactful and engaging.
During the project, Company X provided Deloitte with sample standards from the business as well as subject matter expertise and business perspective. Deloitte was in charge of reviewing sample Learning Standards received from Company X and building Q4 2018 Learning Standards toolkit based on best practices and Company X requirements. This would be further updated after reviewing with the Company X team members.
There are five major Standards Types in scope for Q4 2018. The purpose of each of the standards that falls under these five broad categories have been listed out as follows:
1. Standard Type: Analysis
Standards under Analysis
• Training Pre-Analysis: All performance gap analysis, and business needs analysis, must use the pre-analysis tool. The pre-analysis tool will help identify if the answer to the problem at hand is really training.
• Sourcing Decisions: Any request for learning content must follow the sourcing decision workflow to make Build / Buy / Modify decisions. The sourcing decisions will include a decision tree or criteria for buy/build decisions on learning content.
• Program Needs Analysis: The framework and tools to carry out a needs analysis for individual training programs.
2. Standard Type: Content Design
Standards under Content Design
• Learning Objectives: Learning should have objectives that are action oriented and measurable. A consistent set of guidelines should be followed to determine learning objectives. For e.g., learning objectives should provide a clear picture of expectations, and allow for standard measurement of learning effectiveness.
• Instructional Strategies: Higher level (more interactive) strategies need to be used to drive higher level of learning/behavior. In addition to this, appropriate delivery standards need to be followed for classroom trainings, e-learnings and OJTs. These level based instructional strategies & individual delivery methods will be used during content design.
• Layout/Visual Design: Learning content should follow Company X branding guidelines. Layout (visual design) standards that represent the layout and navigation considerations, will ensure a consistent look and feel for all content.
• Guiding Principles: Relevance, reinforcement, monitoring and measurement of learning content should be clearly defined. All learning content across Baxter should follow a set of guiding principles. For e.g. The content should be relevant, engaging, hands on, etc.
• Instructional Design (ID): These guidelines can be followed to design effective learning content. ID and pedagogy standards represent design considerations for learning objects to be interactive, motivating, and effective at fostering learning and help in standardized decision making.
3. Standard Type: Deployment
Standards under Deployment
• Technical: All digital content must adhere to Company X technical standards. These include technical considerations for a digital learning object to function reliably, effectively, and transparently to the users.
• LMS Course Metadata Standards: Course metadata standards must be followed across the board, without any exceptions. These include Companyy X specific LMS Course metadata standards, naming conventions, course coding conventions.
4. Standard Type: Training Execution
Standards under Training Execution
• Training Assignment/Matrix: The matrix will be the first point of reference in the assignment of learning. Required Training Assignments should be related to the employee’s role and rationale for assignment should be consistently applied. Accountability for assignment resides with the employee’s manager and/or process owners.
5. Standard Type: Evaluation and Measurement
Standards under Evaluation and Measurement
• Training Effectiveness: Measure the training impact to business. Training effectiveness measures are used for continuous improvement.
• Learning Evaluation Form: Learning feedback must be collected using the Learning Evaluation Form. This is used to capture participant’s satisfaction with various aspects of the learning.
• Audits: Internal/External audit requests must be completed using the identified list of standard reports. This includes identified standard list of reports available for auditors.
The projected benefits of having a defined framework in terms of Learning Standards for Company X were identified and is listed as follows:
1. With the introduction of the Learning Standards across the learning organization in a phased manner, the Learner Experience will undergo a radical facelift that will increase learner satisfaction.
2. Globally adopted learning standards will ensure best practices are consistently applied across the organization thereby providing the same learning experience across the board
3. Robust set of standards and supporting tools will support creation of an effective and efficient curriculum, leading to an enhanced learner experience
4. Implementation of learning standards will ensure quality learning content is available globally across the organization.
5. Training Execution standards will ensure appropriate assignment of learning to employees at all levels.
Work on Rationalization:
Rationalization is a process that aims to reduce content and vendor redundancies, outdated courses, and archaic modalities in order to deliver the right learning content at the right time, leading to a more efficient and enhanced learning experience.
Content Rationalization focuses on removing redundancies in the curriculum and archiving outdated content by laying out the guidelines for retirement decisions. The tangible benefits of content rationalization are listed out as follows:
• De-clutters catalogs to simplify the search for relevant content.
• Enhances the learning experience because content meets desired standards.
• Identifies underutilized content that can potentially reduce vendor dependence.
• Reduces costs associated with multiple vendors and ongoing maintenance.
• Ensures availability of the most current version of the content.
Two main methodologies are followed for content rationalization:
1. Quantitative Content Rationalization: This utilizes readily available learner metrics (e.g. usage, completion) to streamline course catalogs based on active usage and regular maintenance across different systems.
2. Qualitative Content Rationalization: This refers to retiring redundant and outdated learning objects and utilizing qualitative criteria to identify opportunities to enhance courses.
In the course of this internship, data consolidation efforts for quantitative content rationalization has been carried out and the results recorded.
PROGRESS REPORT
PARTICULARS Status
Defining scope and list of standards Completed
Standards under Analysis Completed
Standards under Content Design Completed
Standards under Training Execution Completed
Standards under Evaluation and Measurement Completed
Data Consolidation for Rationalization Thread Completed
Standards under Deployment In progress
Final presentation Pending (01/06/2018)
CHALLENGES:
1. Multi-discipline project with involvement of internal resources across the organization: This led to difficulties in communication and agreement between all parties involved.
2. Data Procurement: The models used to build the standards toolkit had to be Company X specific and the vaguely defined organization model of the company made it difficult to obtain the right information at the first go.
3. Fragmented skills across Company X which led to knowledge gaps.
4. Highly dynamic client that led to ambiguity: Frequent changes required for the deliverables
5. Working in virtual teams across geographies in different time zones made it harder to schedule calls and get timely updates.
But after a couple of weeks into the project, daily touchpoints with the entire team was set up that allowed effective channels of communication be established. The dynamic nature of the client taught us to deal with ambiguity and manage multiple tasks at the same time. Deloitte’s internal resources were leveraged to build up the standards and facilitate the design of a new organization model for Company X.
